BEAUFORTBEAUFORT COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . Beaufort County Community College’s Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN— Personalized Learning and Advising

BEAUFORT COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE

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EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Beaufort County Community College’s Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, is a multipart advising strategy to help students reach their education, professional and life goals. This Quality Enhancement Plan innovatively configures our existing course management system to support a faculty-based academic advising model by improving advising communication and connecting advisors to activities that students complete in the required college success course.

Institutional data reflect declining retention, progression and completion rates, as well as an inverted relationship between student success and student satisfaction with advising. Yet, focus group discussions with students, faculty and staff frequently revealed concerns regarding advising consistency, lack of career planning tools and ineffective advising communication channels. Based on student success research and advising best practices, BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator addresses three overall goals to strengthen academic advising and improve student success on our campus: Develop a campus culture that recognizes academic advising as essential to student

success Foster student responsibility and accountability in the advising process in all BCCC

students Improve advising consistency in all academic programs

BCCC PLAN focuses on four components that will improve academic advising on our campus:

I. Prepare advisors for their roles through new advisor training and advisor development for current advisors.

II. Establish measurable advising program goals and student learning outcomes that connect advising to teaching through an Advising Guide.

III. Provide Focus 2 Career, a career interests and skills assessment inventory, to help students select a major related to their career interests and skill level.

IV. Launch Blackboard Advising Sites for every advisor to foster communication and information sharing in the advising relationship.

While summative program success will be measured by institutional data related to progression and completion, formative assessment of four Student Learning Outcomes and four Process Delivery Outcomes will evaluate our ongoing progress toward achieving BCCC PLAN goals. These outcomes will be assessed by direct, indirect, quantitative and qualitative measures, including: rubrics; pre/post-tests; focus groups; training exit surveys; English course enrollment and a nationally-normed instrument offered by NACADA: The Global Community, Academic Advising Inventory. For more information regarding BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, please contact Laurie Evans, QEP Director.


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................................... 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ............................................................................................................. 2 LIST OF TABLES AND ILLUSTRATIONS ................................................................................... 3 PROCESS TO DEVELOP THE QEP .......................................................................................... 4

Selecting a Broad Topic ........................................................................................................ 4 Narrowing the Topic .............................................................................................................. 5 Developing the QEP .............................................................................................................. 7

IDENTIFICATION OF THE TOPIC ............................................................................................ 11 Alignment with the Mission .................................................................................................. 11 Institutional Research to Support BCCC PLAN ................................................................... 12

PROGRAM GOALS AND STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES ................................................ 17 LITERATURE REVIEW ............................................................................................................. 19 ACTIONS TO BE IMPLEMENTED ............................................................................................ 27

I. Advisor Training and Development .............................................................................. 27 II. Advising Guide ............................................................................................................. 33 III. Focus 2 Career ............................................................................................................ 36 IV. Blackboard Advising Sites ............................................................................................ 40

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE ............................................................................................ 44 RESOURCES/BUDGET ........................................................................................................... 46 ASSESSMENT PLAN ............................................................................................................... 49

Baselines of Institutional Data Related to Student Success (Summative) ............................ 49 Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes (Formative) ......................... 50 Mapping of Student Learning Outcomes ............................................................................. 55 Mapping of Process Delivery Outcomes .............................................................................. 63

REFERENCES ......................................................................................................................... 72 APPENDICES ........................................................................................................................... 76

Appendix A: Data Provided to Faculty and Staff during Focus Groups for Topic Selection .............................................................................................................. 76 Appendix B: Topic Selection Ballot and Results .................................................................. 80 Appendix C: Student Survey for Topic Selection ................................................................. 81 Appendix D: Data from Faculty Listening Sessions to Narrow the Topic.............................. 82 Appendix E: Student Topic Narrowing Focus Group Data ................................................... 86 Appendix F: Planning Committee Faculty/Staff Focus Group Results ................................. 87 Appendix G: Advising Guide Outline ................................................................................... 88 Appendix H: Academic PLAN Assignment Scoring Rubric .................................................. 89 Appendix I: Advising Session Log ....................................................................................... 90 Appendix J: Academics Organizational Chart ...................................................................... 91 Appendix K: North Carolina Community Colleges 2017 Performance Measures

for Student Success ..................................................................................................... 92 Appendix L: NACADA Academic Advising Inventory ........................................................... 96


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LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: 2017 Performance Measures.................................................................................................. 12

Table 2: College-level English and Math Course Success ................................................................ 13

Table 3: Six-year Completion Rates...................................................................................................... 13

Table 4: Three-year Graduation Rate ................................................................................................... 14

Table 5: Fall to Spring Retention Rate .................................................................................................. 14

Table 6: BCCC PLAN Program Goals .................................................................................................. 17

Table 7: BCCC PLAN Student Learning Outcomes ........................................................................... 17

Table 8: BCCC PLAN Process Delivery Outcomes ............................................................................ 18

Table 9: Advisor Training Timeline ........................................................................................................ 31

Table 10: Advising Guide Timeline ........................................................................................................ 35

Table 11: Focus 2 Career Timeline ....................................................................................................... 39

Table 12: BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites Timeline............................................................. 42

Table 13: Reporting Structure for BCCC PLAN Workgroup Leads .................................................. 44

Table 14: BCCC PLAN Responsibilities Based on BCCC Role ....................................................... 44

Table 15: BCCC PLAN Budget .............................................................................................................. 46

Table 16: Baselines and Expected Impacts on Student Success .................................................... 49

Table 17: BCCC PLAN Assessment Instruments and Data Collection Responsibility.................. 51

Table 18: Assessment of Student Learning Outcome 1 .................................................................... 55




Table 22: Assessment of Process Delivery Outcome 1 ..................................................................... 64




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

Illustration 1: Map of BCCC’s Four-county Area ................................................................................. 11 Illustration 2: BCCC PLAN Artwork ....................................................................................................... 12


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PROCESS TO DEVELOP THE QEP

In fall 2015, BCCC Senior Staff assembled the Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) committee as an official standing committee of the college. Dr. Barbara Tansey (previous president) and Dr. Crystal Ange (Vice President of Academics) engaged faculty member Laurie Evans (Arts and Sciences) to lead the QEP project. The original committee was comprised of faculty, administration and staff from across the College. Selecting a Broad Topic for the QEP (2015-2016) Preparation To prepare for topic selection, the institution facilitated SACSCOC training opportunities for the QEP director and several senior staff members. The QEP director attended the SACSCOC Institute on Quality Effectiveness in 2015 (Orlando), while the Vice President of Academics, Vice President of Student Services, Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness and two deans attended the SACSCOC Annual Meeting the same year (Houston). During the first two planning years, the Vice President of Academics and the Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness served as resources for the QEP committee. They were actively involved in sharing SACSCOC requirements and expectations with committee members; however, they did not influence the outcome of the topic selection process. Activities The broad topic selection for BCCC’s Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, was developed through an institutional process that was informed by institutional assessment data and supported by broad-based involvement of the college’s stakeholders. Student, faculty and staff input in the broad topic selection process occurred on three levels: survey instruments, employee focus groups, and a student focus group. To this end, all faculty and staff participated in two focus group sessions to identify potential QEP topics. The committee made intentional efforts to present focus group sessions as opportunities for faculty and staff to have significant input in shaping our next QEP, thereby, enhancing instruction and student success. The campus responded favorably to this approach and fully engaged in the topic selection process. The goal of session one was to generate a list of the six most urgent issues that hinder student learning and success at BCCC. In random groups of 15-20, faculty and staff were led through a Facilitated Leadership focus group session. Each large group of 15-20 people was divided into smaller groups of 5-6. Participants received data overviews from the Fall 2015 Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI), a nationally normed instrument provided by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, and the Fall 2015 Learning College Survey (LCS), a locally developed instrument (Appendix A). Small groups analyzed data and identified issues they believed to present the greatest challenges to student learning and success. Facilitators asked small groups to share their findings, and results were recorded. Findings from all large groups were conflated; student accountability, student computer literacy, campus communication, registration, advising, and student career development emerged as the most commonly noted areas for improvement.


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The goal of session two was to narrow the previous list of six broad topics to three. Session two was structured similarly to the first session, with large groups of 15-20 faculty and staff members working with a facilitator. Again, small groups of 5-6 people discussed and considered the six areas for improvement that emerged from session one. To ensure that participants focused on action-oriented topics, small groups were asked to generate a list of specific strategies to improve each of the six issues identified in session one. Small groups reported out to the larger group, and the facilitator recorded. At the end of session two, participants were reminded of the SACSCOC guidelines for QEP and were asked to rank the six issues in terms of importance and appropriateness for the QEP using a survey instrument. Participants identified (1) improvements to advising, (2) registration and (3) student computer literacy, in this order, as areas of improvement that would have the most impact on BCCC students’ learning and student success (Appendix B). Since data from the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) were foundational to the process faculty and staff used to prioritize student learning/success needs, we returned to the student perspective to triangulate the results from faculty/staff focus groups. In April 2016, the QEP committee used Blackboard to launch an eighteen-item student survey focused on advising, registration and student computer literacy (Appendix C). Students identified all three areas as important, and they ranked the importance in the same order as did faculty and staff. Further, the performance gap between the importance students attached to an item and their satisfaction with the item also supported ranking the issues in the order of (1) advising, (2) registration and (3) student computer literacy. Of particular note, the following items revealed the largest performance gaps: My advisor is knowledgeable of courses required to achieve my goal; My advisor is available when I need to discuss my schedule and goals; My advisor actively and frequently communicates with me regarding progress towards my goals and Required courses for my program of study were available for me to take each semester. While the latter was intended to derive information related to registration, the item is closely linked to planning and advising. Results After analyzing SSI and Learning College Survey data, results from faculty and staff focus groups, results from the April 2016 student survey and feedback from the Board of Trustees (via Senior Staff), the QEP committee was confident in the campus’s unity behind the three ordered topic choices. While advising and student computer literacy clearly aligned with the SACSCOC guidelines, the committee determined that registration is a process rather than a learning strategy to improve student success and voted to eliminate it as a possible broad topic. The QEP committee submitted (1) advising and (2) student computer literacy, in ranked order, to Senior Staff as possible QEP topics. Senior Staff voted to accept the QEP committee’s recommendation to adopt advising as the broad QEP topic. Throughout the topic selection process, the Board of Trustees received project updates and were encouraged to provide feedback to the committee via Senior Staff. The QEP topic, advising, was presented to the Board of Trustees at the May 2016 meeting. Narrowing the Broad Topic (2016-2017) Preparation To prepare for narrowing the broad topic, the institution facilitated SACSCOC training opportunities for the QEP Director and several senior staff members. The QEP Director, Vice President of Academics, Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness and the Vice President of Administrative Services attended the 2016 SACSCOC Annual Meeting (Atlanta).


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Activities The QEP Committee restructured in 2016-2017 to enhance expertise needed to narrow the general topic, advising, to a more precise scope. Additionally, retiring faculty members Jackie Keen and Gretchen Thompson were replaced by faculty members Dr. Millie House (Allied Health and Public Services) and Carol Ingalls (Business/Industrial Technology). Other committee appointments included Marshall Hall (Learning Resources), James Casey (Learning Enhancement Center), Julia Crippen (Grants/Institutional Effectiveness), and Tashawna Scott (Student Services). Penelope Radcliffe (Continuing Education) remained in place from the previous year. Narrowing “advising” to a manageable scope for BCCC’s QEP involved three primary activities:

Best practice research Advisor listening sessions Student listening session

QEP committee members employed a three-part approach to research best practices for advising: reviewed all QEP executive summaries housed on the SACSCOC website to identify schools that addressed advising-related QEP topics, conducted a broad “advising” literature search, contacted North Carolina Community College System institutions to learn about their advising strategies. During the best practices report out, several exemplary advising QEPs emerged, and the committee reached out to these schools requesting full QEP narratives. While several QEPs entailed significantly greater resource allocation than feasible at BCCC, reviewing these documents assisted committee members to recognize cost effective strategies during our topic narrowing and project development stages. Given the campus’s positive response to Facilitated Leadership focus group sessions in 2015-2016, the committee revisited the model and hosted “listening sessions” for faculty advisors in February 2017 to gather advisors’ perceptions of strengths and weaknesses of our current advising model. Sessions, led by a QEP committee faculty member, were held in each academic division. Input was transcribed and analyzed, revealing similar perceptions of strengths and weaknesses in all academic divisions (Appendix D). Similar to previous focus group sessions, advisors expressed satisfaction and appreciation for the opportunity to provide input to the Quality Enhancement Plan. Parallel to advisor listening sessions, the committee facilitated a student listening session to gather students’ perception of strengths and weaknesses of our current advising model. The student session followed a traditional focus group approach with participants from various academic backgrounds and disciplines. The group composition included two GED graduates, two TRIO students, two Arts and Sciences students, two Mechanical Engineering Technology students and one part-time work study student. Participants received an email invitation to participate, and lunch was provided. The session was recorded and results were compiled and analyzed (Appendix E). QEP committee members consolidated results from listening sessions to generate a comprehensive composite of BCCC’s advising strengths and weaknesses. By juxtapositioning strengths and weaknesses, the committee sought to capitalize on our strengths (e.g., experienced advisors, small campus size and one-on-one student/faculty relationships) to improve upon weaknesses (e.g., inconsistent advisor knowledge, poor communication, and lack of career advising) in identifying specific advising strategies to be addressed in our Quality Enhancement Plan.


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Next, the QEP committee generated a list of potential strategies relevant to our campus needs based on comparison of weaknesses, best practices gleaned earlier in 2016, and suggestions from listening sessions. This list included the following: advising syllabus advisor training learning skills assessment inventory career interests/ skills inventory technology skills inventory subject-specific advisor assignments dual role advising developmental advising

required college success course in first semester early alert system structured curricula group advising peer advising obstacle assessment master faculty advisors

Results The committee identified four primary advising strategies to address the majority of weaknesses previously identified: Career interests/skills inventory assessment Advising Guide Advisor Training Online platform to facilitate and house these tools and facilitate communication between

advisors and students Hence, the topic for BCCC’s Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, was identified and narrowed through an institutional process that was informed by institutional assessment data and supported by broad-based involvement of the college’s stakeholders. BCCC PLAN is a multipart advising strategy to help students reach their educational, professional and life goals. As such, the project supports the BCCC Mission of providing “access to university transfer, workforce development, and life-long learning programs” to the people served by the College. During the process of narrowing the Quality Enhancement Plan topic, the campus rallied around the importance of student success, specifically advising practices. As a result, several ideas and strategies identified by faculty, staff and students spurred other campus advising-related projects, such as redesigning our college transfer success course (ACA122), development of curriculum flow charts for every program and groundwork for researching and implementing early alert retention software. The QEP team was mindful that the scope of BCCC’s QEP must be narrow enough to be manageable and sustainable in terms of budget and resources. The four primary components of the QEP encompass many ideas that were presented, and the campus benefitted from the discussion and energy generated by the process. Developing the QEP (2017-2018) Preparation To prepare for the developing the QEP, the institution provided SACSCOC training opportunities to four QEP committee members. Laurie Evans, Carol Ingalls, Dr. Millie House and James Casey attended the Institute on Quality Effectiveness in 2017 (Austin). Additionally, the QEP Director, Vice President of Academics and Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness attended the SACSCOC Annual Meeting in 2017 (Dallas). Activities Based on the recommendation of Dr. David Loope, President, the QEP Committee membership was expanded in 2017-2018 to include more faculty members in the development stage. New


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committee members included Matthew Lincoln (Business/Industrial Technology) and Dr. Elizabeth Brown (Arts and Sciences). All previous members remained in place, creating excellent unity in the transition from topic narrowing to project development. After the topic was fully selected and narrowed, the President, Vice President of Academics and Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness joined the QEP committee as ex-officio members. Their involvement provided direct access to resources, as well as enhanced the communication between the committee, Senior Staff and the Board of Trustees. During 2017-2018, project development, the committee formed workgroups to design BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator components. Committee members who received SACSCOC training led workgroups for primary BCCC PLAN components: Career Interests/Skills Inventory, Advising Guide, Advisor Training, and a Blackboard Advising Site delivery platform. Each workgroup included at least two QEP committee members and involved subject matter experts from various parts of campus. Workgroups conducted thorough literature reviews of each QEP component and involved campus subject matter experts to design Student Learning Outcomes, implementation plan and assessment strategies for their BCCC PLAN component. The Career Interest/Skills Inventory workgroup is led by James Casey, while other QEP team members on the workgroup included Tashawna Scott (Coordinator of TRIO Student Support) and Penelope Radcliffe (Director of Human Resource Development, Continuing Education). The workgroup involved subject matter experts in student services, including the Director of Counseling, Kimberly Jackson, and NC Works liaison, Andrew Bost, as well as experienced faculty advisors. While our initial goal was to employ a straightforward career interest inventory, the group heard considerable feedback regarding the need for a tool to assess skill capacity and learning styles. Ultimately, the group determined that Focus 2 Career contains multiple inventories that align with our needs. The Advisor Training workgroup is led by Carol Ingalls, and QEP team member Matthew Lincoln worked with her to engage campus subject-matter experts. This workgroup invited deans to identify master advisors in each division. Master advisors provided significant input regarding the design of the Advisor Training, including the need for separate training for new advisors and professional development for current advisors. This workgroup met with many advisors and determined that our current advisor training strategy was inconsistent across all areas of campus. Interviews revealed that while smaller programs, such as Medical Office Administration and Mechanical Engineering Technology, provide personalized one-on-one advising with advisors in a student’s particular field, larger programs, such as Associate of Arts, Associate of Science and Associate of General Education, struggle to deliver personalized advising due to high advisee/advisor loads. As a result, our college transfer programs pose unique advisor training dilemmas because advisors advise students for transfer in a variety of disciplines to many different institutions. The Advising Guide workgroup is led by Dr. Millie House, with significant involvement of QEP team member, Dr. Elizabeth Brown. Similar to other QEP workgroups, subject-matter experts were heavily involved in the development of this component, including experienced advisors, counselors, admissions staff and academic deans. Input revealed the need for a comprehensive Advising Guide to help students prepare for advisor meetings and conversations, thereby teaching students to take responsibility for their success. Advising Guide conversations also generated ideas to help academic advisors connect students with appropriate student support services.


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The QEP Blackboard Advising Site component is led by Laurie Evans and James Casey, while BCCC’s Blackboard Administrator and Network Coordinator provided the technical expertise to identify ways to tailor Blackboard for BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator. In fact, the idea to use Blackboard as an advising tool originated from these subject-matter experts. The workgroup met with our offsite Blackboard consultant to determine whether Blackboard resources were sufficient for this use. After revising our Blackboard framework and testing multiple Blackboard configurations, the workgroup presented a prototype of the Blackboard Advising Site to faculty for feedback. All BCCC PLAN components will be housed in Blackboard Advising Sites, specific to each advisor. Students will complete Focus 2 Career and the Advising Guide in Blackboard, and results will populate in the Blackboard Advising Sites to provide advisors access to information to help students. BCCC PLAN’s Blackboard Advising Site prototype was piloted in test mode for one advisor during 2017-2018. While the prototype pilot did not include Focus 2 Career or the Advising Guide, the workgroup used the test site to troubleshoot the overall concept of using our learning management system for advising. Two ad hoc workgroups were created to publicize and engage campus constituents with QEP. The Marketing workgroup included the QEP Director; QEP Vice Chair; Vice President of Academics; Vice President of Research and Institutional Effectiveness; Marketing Coordinator and the Public Relations Coordinator, which have been combined into one position titled Coordinator of Marketing and Public Relations as of July 2018. The publicity workgroup is comprised of four QEP committee members and seven members from service or geographical areas of campus that are not fully represented on the QEP committee: Kim Moulden (Cosmetology faculty), Dana Sauls (High School programs), Trina Cobb (Library), Edie Barbour (Administrative Services), Michele Mayo (Admissions), and Theresa Edwards (Student Services) and Dr. Stacey Russell (Arts/Sciences faculty). The Marketing workgroup created initial branding and marketing strategies for the project. The project was titled BCCC PLAN: Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator to orient constituents to our emphasis on advising and the inherent connections between planning and student success. The project logo connects BCCC PLAN’s navigational theme with the cultural importance of the waterways in eastern North Carolina. The logo was designed by James Casey, QEP Vice Chair, and reviewed by the Marketing workgroup, the BCCC Marketing standing committee and administration, including the President. The QEP committee adopted the design in January 2018. BCCC PLAN’s marketing strategy began with a two-month campus-wide teaser to pique interest in BCCC PLAN through email, messages in campus publications, social media and large magnets containing the project’s logo and the question “What’s your plan?” Prior to the reveal of BCCC PLAN’s sub-title to students, Board of Trustees members, faculty and staff were introduced to the logo through regularly scheduled meetings of the Board, Faculty Senate and Staff Association, as well as departmental and divisional meetings. The Publicity workgroup organized a big “reveal” for students in March 2018 during BCCC’s annual Spring Fling student event and Test Drive Your College, an event for prospective students. Each workgroup compiled best practice research and campus feedback on each component to compose text for the QEP document sections. The QEP Director integrated workgroup documents to assemble the full QEP draft, which was shared with BCCC administration in April 2018. The document was revised and shared with the full QEP Committee, the SACSCOC Leadership Committee, and administration for discussion and feedback from all sectors of campus, as reflected by the membership of the two committees. Revision continued as described through July 2018, and the final document was submitted to SACSCOC on August 1, 2018.


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Results BCCC PLAN was designed with broad-based involvement of the College’s stakeholders based on campus needs and best practice research. BCCC PLAN’s four components address issues identified by students, faculty and staff. The Board of Trustees were invited to provide input and received updates from the QEP Director, Senior Staff, and the President during regularly scheduled meetings. Students were engaged with BCCC PLAN design through the test Blackboard Advising Site and the “reveal” in March 2018. The next section, Identification of the Topic, details the alignment between BCCC PLAN and the College’s Mission and institutional data.


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IDENTIFICATION OF THE TOPIC

Alignment with the Mission Our mission, “Beaufort County Community College is a public, comprehensive community college that provides open-door access to university transfer, workforce development, and life-long learning programs for the people of Beaufort, Hyde, Tyrrell, and Washington Counties,” illustrates the College’s commitment to improving individual lives and the communities we serve. BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, a multipart advising strategy to help students reach their educational, professional, and life goals, supports the mission with regard to program goals and an intentional focus on eastern North Carolina. BCCC PLAN operationalizes two objectives of Goal A in the college’s strategic plan: Goal A: Offer relevant, high quality academic programs that result in student success. Objectives:

A.2. Develop a comprehensive student advising program focused on enhancement of in-take, career planning, student persistence, retention, and graduation rates. A.3. Enhance faculty professional development opportunities related to advising, teaching effectiveness, student learning, and disciplinary specialties.

The College serves students from four counties, covering over 2008 square miles (Illustration 1). Our catchment area is the largest in the North Carolina Community College System. In the Welcome from the President on the BCCC website, Dr. Loope describes the diversity of our student population: “Some are starting with us with the goal of transferring to a university, while others may have a specific career goal in mind. Some of them are part of the Early College High School. Still others are returning to college, changing careers, or joining us for additional training. Whatever their intention, our students come to BCCC with shared journeys and shared dreams, seeking to build a solid foundation for life and career.” This description clearly reflects the mission statement and the focus of BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator: helping students reach their educational, work, and lifelong goals.

Whether enrolled in a college transfer program, an applied science program, or a general education program, student success depends on student engagement, goal setting and planning, activities embedded in a comprehensive academic advising strategy. BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator is designed to strengthen academic advising in all academic curriculum programs within the College, including college transfer (linkage: “university transfer”), applied science (linkage: “workforce development”) and general education (linkages: “workforce development and life-long

Illustration 1: Map of BCCC’s Four-county Area


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learning”). By strategically improving academic advising, we will improve student success, reduce barriers to completion, and ultimately help students achieve their academic, professional and lifelong goals in a timely and efficient manner. Artwork and branding for BCCC PLAN further emphasize the College’s focus on eastern North Carolina and our four-county area (Illustration 2). The artwork conflates our navigational-focused theme with the cultural importance of waterways in eastern NC. The waterways provide opportunities and challenges for residents in the region, especially with regard to transportation, technology, workforce and economic development. Some students travel 90 minutes or more each way to campus due to rural roads or the geographic incision created by the Pamlico and Pungo Rivers. Illustration 2: BCCC PLAN Artwork

Institutional Research to Support BCCC PLAN The North Carolina Community College System compiles annual performance measures of student success for all 58 schools in the system. The 2017 Performance Measures for Student Success (NCCS-PMSS) indicates areas of concern for the institution related to student success in college-level English and Math courses and curriculum completion rates (Table 1). Table 1: 2017 Performance Measures

Success in College-level English and Math Courses North Carolina Community College System’s Performance Measures for Student Success (2017) defines success in college-level English and Math Courses as the “percentage of first-time Associate Degree seeking and transfer pathway students passing a credit-bearing

English [or Math] course with a “C” or better within two years of their first term of enrollment” (p. 6; 8). BCCC’s success rates may reveal more about advising than actual course success (see Table 2). Of BCCC’s cohort of 305 first-time Associate Degree seeking and transfer pathway

CREDIT ENGLISH SUCCESS

CREDIT MATH

SUCCESS

CURR COMPLETION

RATE System Excellence Level

55.9% 32.5% 51.9%

System Baseline 23.8% 10.1% 35.9% Average College Percentage

50.9% 29.0% 43.7%

System Totals (All Students)

52.0% 29.8% 44.0%

Beaufort County CC 35.7% 27.5% 35.1%


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students, only 157, or 51.5%, enrolled in a college-level English course within two years. Likewise, only 110, or 36.1%, enrolled in a college-level Math course within two years. BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator will equip advisors with knowledge and tools to help students make better course selections in a timely manner. Table 2: College-level English and Math Course Success

Fall 2017 Cohort Credit Enrollment Credit Success % Successful Beaufort County CC English 305 157 109 35.7% Math 305 110 84 27.5%

Curriculum Completion Rate North Carolina Community College System’s 2017 Performance Measures for Student Success indicates only 35% of students who began their program of study in fall 2010 graduated, transferred to another school or were still pursuing their program of study with at least 36 semester hours of non-developmental coursework (see Table 3).. When disaggregated, curriculum completion rates were similar for programs in Arts/Sciences (38%), Business Technology (31%), Transportation Technology (38%) and Public Services (35%), yet Health Sciences programs posted a 62% completion rate. In contrast, scores for Engineering Technology (25%) and Industrial Technology (19%) were lower. The report also shows BCCC’s 6-year Curriculum Completion rate has declined significantly since the fall 2007 cohort The decline may be due in part to the College’s discontinuation of federal student loans in 2015; however, poor curriculum completion rates of any description indicate poor student success. Through BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, we will leverage strategic academic and career advising resources to strengthen student engagement and responsibility, leading to improved curriculum completion rates. Table 3: Six-year Completion Rates

Local institutional data verify weak completion rates when analyzed in terms of 3-year graduation rates (see Table 4). For example, of our top ten curriculum programs (based on FTE), the 2013 and 2014 cohorts indicate significant drops for Associate of Arts (2013: 33%, 2014: 10%), Nursing (2013: 100%, 2014: 75%) and Criminal Justice (2013: 12.9%, 2014: 5.6%). In contrast, improvement in the 3-year graduation can be seen for Associate of General Education (2013: 7.1%, 2014: 14.3%), Medical Office Administration (2013: 10%, 2014: 20%), and Cosmetology (2013: 11.1%, 2014: 14.3%).

2010 2009 2008 2007 COHORT TOTAL

GRAD/TRAN/RET

PERCENT

System Totals (All Students) 46,332 20,378 44% 43% 47% 48% Beaufort County CC 333 117 35.1% 39% 50% 51%


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Table 4: Three-year Graduation Rate

Retention Rate The fall to spring retention rates (see Table 5) contradict completion rates and 3-year graduation rates. Associate of General Education Degree retention data from 2013-2016 indicate a decrease in fall to spring retention from 74.6% to 63.5%; however 3-year graduation rates for this program have increased during this period. In contrast, Associate of Arts Degree fall to spring retention rates show fairly steady results between 71.5% and 78.2%; however, the 3-year graduation rates of the 2013 and 2014 cohorts are down from 33.3% to 10%. Similar inverted results exist in Nursing and Criminal Justice. Table 5: Fall to Spring Retention Rate


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Student Satisfaction Data While curriculum completion, 3-year graduation and fall to spring retention rates are alarming, students who persist to graduation rank academic advising favorably. Data from BCCC’s 2015 Graduate Survey demonstrate that graduates are satisfied with academic advising. Of the 245 graduates who completed the survey, when asked to rate their satisfaction with academic advising, 64.49% indicated they were very satisfied; 33.47% indicated they were satisfied. The Graduate Survey is limited in scope because it does not capture information from all students; the only students who complete the survey have persisted to graduation. The Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI), a nationally normed instrument provided by Ruffalo Noel Levitz, provides a more comprehensive snapshot of student satisfaction with academic advising because all students are given the opportunity to complete the inventory. The instrument asks students to characterize a variety of items based on their importance and satisfaction. Based on importance and satisfaction, results are characterized as Strengths, Challenges or Other. Generally speaking, Strengths are areas of high importance to students for which students also have high satisfaction, whereas Challenges are areas of high importance and low student satisfaction. The Fall 2015 Student Satisfaction Inventory identified the following items, related to advising, as Strengths at BCCC:

My academic advisor is approachable. Faculty are usually available after class and during office hours. Nearly all of the faculty are knowledgeable in their fields. Program requirements are clear and reasonable. Students are made to feel welcome on campus. My academic advisor is concerned about my success as an individual. My academic advisor helps me set goals to work toward.

The Fall 2015 Student Satisfaction Inventory identified the following items, related to advising, as Challenges at BCCC:

Faculty are understanding of students’ unique life circumstances. My academic advisor is knowledgeable about the transfer requirement of other schools. Policies and procedures regarding registration and course selection are clear and well-

publicized. Faculty are fair and unbiased in their treatment of individual students. This school does whatever it can to help me reach my educational goals. I seldom get the “run around” when seeking information on this campus. Students are notified early in the term if they are doing poorly in a class. The college shows concern for students as individuals.

Similar challenges also emerged in the BCCC Spring 2016 Student Evaluation of College Services (ECS). Specifically, the following items, related to advising, were identified as Challenges:

My advisor is knowledgeable of courses required to achieve my goal. My advisor is available when I need to discuss my schedule and goals. My advisor actively and frequently communicates with me regarding progress toward my

goal. Additionally, the 2016 Graduate Survey asked students to identify if they were employed and if their current employment was related to their academic program of study. Approximately one-


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third of graduates (32.54%) indicated that their employment was not related to their program of study. Although this is only indirectly related to career advising, it does suggest that there may be some level of incongruence between academic preparation, career goals and current market needs/demands. Faculty and Staff Institutional Data Institutional research also validates the need for BCCC PLAN’s Career Interests/Skills Inventory component. In Fall 2015, faculty and staff were invited to respond to a locally developed “Learning College Survey” (LCS). This survey asked faculty and staff to indicate their perception that learning-centered practices had been implemented across the college across a variety of areas using a scale of 0-4, were zero represents no implementation and 4 represents full implementation. A large percentage of participants indicated lack of familiarity of implementation related to learning styles assessments for entering students (faculty 1.93/staff 1.76), career interest inventories for students (faculty 1.02/staff 0.85) and a survey of education expectations for entering students (faculty 0.72/staff 0.65). While these learning-centered practices are integrated in some college areas, such as student counseling, large scale delivery of practices and results are not integrated in day-to-day student advising because academic advisors do not have access to career advising assessment tools and results. Faculty and staff also identified the lack of career planning as a weakness in student advising and a challenge toward achieving our Mission during the Planning Committee’s Spring 2017 Faculty/Staff Focus Group (Appendix F). Data reflect the importance of improving communication with students. The Planning Committee’s Spring 2017 Faculty/Staff Focus Group results noted poor communication as a barrier to student success with regard to advising and registration (see Appendix F). The session also noted the importance of providing easy access to curriculum information. Likewise, in Fall 2015, the Student Satisfaction Inventory (SSI) results identified “Policies and procedures regarding registration and course selection are clear and well-publicized” as a Challenge. In contrast, the Fall 2015 Learning College survey revealed that faculty ranked “communicating with students using methods that they prefer” somewhat important (2.48) on a value/importance scale (zero represents no importance and 4 represents very important). Faculty ranked “offer academic advising through email, telephone and video conferencing” slightly more important (2.78). These data illustrate a need to improve communication. Blackboard Advising Sites, proposed in BCCC PLAN, provide a familiar mode of communication for students and faculty advisors in an online environment that can be tailored to student needs. Advisors may use BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites to send email, post announcements, host private and group video conferences, connect students to campus resources and place reminders on students’ calendars. The proposed Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, is derived from the institution’s ongoing comprehensive planning and evaluation processes. Further, BCCC PLAN supports the College’s Mission to “provide[s] open-door access to university transfer, workforce development, and life-long learning programs for the people of Beaufort, Hyde, Tyrrell, and Washington Counties.” Based on institutional data and broad input from the College’s students, faculty and staff, Program Goals, Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes were developed for BCCC PLAN. These foundational elements comprise the next section.


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PROGRAM GOALS AND STUDENT LEARNING OUTCOMES

In order to improve student success, reduce barriers to completion, and ultimately help students achieve their academic, professional and lifelong goals in a timely and efficient manner, the QEP team established three overarching program goals to guide BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator (see Table 6). The QEP team recognizes while advising alone will not influence every student success indicator, establishing a campus-wide advising culture that fosters student responsibility and establishes advising consistency can be definitively linked to student success. The QEP team established the following goals and outcomes for BCCC PLAN-Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator to assist the College toward Strategic Plan Goal A, which aims to improve student success, and Strategic Plan Objectives A2 and A3, which focus on improving student advising and advisor professional development. Table 6: BCCC PLAN Program Goals

Goals for BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator BCCC Strategic Plan

Goal 1 Develop campus culture that recognizes academic advising as essential to student success

Strategic Plan Goal A-2

Goal 2 Foster student responsibility and accountability in the advising process in all BCCC students


Goal 3 Improve advising consistency in all academic programs


These programmatic goals create the framework for the Student Learning Outcomes for BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator, as noted in Table 7. Table 7: BCCC PLAN Student Learning Outcomes

Student Learning Outcomes for BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator

QEP Goal Alignment

SLO 1 Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions.

Goal 2

SLO 2 Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions.

Goal 2

SLO 3 Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills.

Goal 1 Goal 2

SLO 4 Students will develop a coherent academic plan aligned with their educational/career goals that meets program requirements.

Goal 1 Goal 2

These Student Learning Outcomes align with the Council for the Advancement of Standards (CAS) in Higher Education’s Standards for Learning and Development Outcomes (2015) and the NACADA Concept of Academic Advising (2006). Student Learning Outcome 1: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions and Student Learning Outcome 2: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions mirror the Council for the


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Advancement of Standards in Higher Education’s (2015) third dimension regarding Intrapersonal Development by measuring that students are “involved in personal decision-making” and they “accept[s] personal accountability” (p. 5). Student Learning Outcomes 1 and 2 also reflect the NACADA Concept of Academic Advising (2006) suggested student learning outcome to “assume responsibility for meeting academic program requirements” (Student Learning Outcomes). Student Learning Outcome 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills addresses the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (2015) first dimension regarding Knowledge Acquisition, Construction, Integration, and Application by measuring student’s ability to “articulate[s] career choices based on assessment of interests, values, skills, and abilities” (p. 5) and the third dimension of Intrapersonal Development which suggests using interest and skills assessments to make career choices (p. 5). Student Learning Outcome 3 also aligns with the NACADA Concept of Academic Advising (2006) suggested student learning outcome which focuses on skill and interest assessment. Student Learning Outcome 4: Students will develop a coherent academic plan aligned with their educational/career goals that meets program requirements aligns with the Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education (2015) Practical Competence Dimension and suggested learning outcome to “articulate and make plans to achieve long-term goals and objectives” (p.6), as well as NACADA Concept of Academic Advising (2006) suggested student learning outcome to “craft a coherent educational plan based on assessment of abilities, aspirations, interests, and values” (Student Learning Outcomes). Additionally, the QEP team recognizes that in order to reach Goal 3: Improve advising consistency in all academic programs, BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator must integrate Process Delivery Outcomes to articulate BCCC’s expectations for how academic advising is delivered and what information will be delivered through academic advising (Robbins & Zarges, 2011), as well as improve the means of communication between advisors and their advisees. The Process Delivery Outcomes, noted in Table 8, support achievement of the Student Learning Outcomes and provide a way for the College to evaluate our efforts to train advisors to deliver consistent advising. The Process Delivery Outcomes were developed in accordance with the NACADA Core Competencies Model (2017), which closely align with advising training components outlined by Habley (1995). Table 8: BCCC PLAN Process Delivery Outcomes

Process Delivery Outcomes for BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator

QEP Goal Alignment

Based on

PDO 1 Advisors will provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources.

Goal 3 NACADA/Habley Information Component

PDO 2 Advisors will employ collaborative advising strategies to guide students to make responsible academic decisions.

Goal 3 NACADA/Habley Conceptual Component

PDO 3 Advisors will demonstrate relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship.

Goal 3 NACADA/Habley Relational Component

PDO 4 Advisors will communicate information in a timely and efficient manner.

Goal 3 NACADA

The Assessment Plan, which follows on page 49, details assessment, evaluation and continuous improvement of BCCC PLAN--Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator. These goals and outcomes were the basis of the Literature Review, which follows in the next section.


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LITERATURE REVIEW

Background In 1972, and again in 2012, Terry O’Banion asserted, “Academic advising is the second-most important function in the community college. If it is not conducted with the utmost efficiency and effectiveness, the most important function—instruction—will fail to ensure that students navigate the curriculum to completion” (p. 43). O’Banion’s position expresses the urgency and importance we have assigned to our Quality Enhancement Plan, BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator. Institutional data reflect low retention and completion rates, faculty dissatisfaction with the current advising model, and inconsistencies between student satisfaction with advising and student success. Our current decentralized faculty-based advising model was implemented long before NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising aligned academic advising with teaching. Currently, BCCC students evaluate faculty advisors by satisfaction/perception of importance surveys; however, specific institutional advising practices that lead to student success have not been thoroughly addressed. With the closing of BCCC’s Career Center in 2014, career advising, when it occurred on our campus, became decentralized and dependent on informal sessions with student services counselors, faculty advisors, and other assorted college staff. During our QEP listening sessions in Fall 2016, however, BCCC faculty, staff and students identified career advising as a pressing need. As such, this literature review investigates the following topics:

• Contemporary academic advising philosophy

• Relationship between academic advising and student success

• Direct assessment measurements for academic advising

• Faculty-based advising models • Advisor training • Career advising • Advising syllabi • Course management systems for

academic advising

Philosophy of Academic Advising NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising’s Concept of Academic Advising (2006) posits that academic advising is comprised of three learning-centered components: “curriculum (what advising deals with), pedagogy (how advising does what it does), and student learning outcomes (the result of academic advising).” An early advocate of the linkage between teaching and advising, Crookston (1972) connected prescriptive advising to teaching; however, as advising theories shifted toward developmental advising, theorists expanded Crookston’s ideas toward a more student-centered approach that values student engagement and active learning (Campbell & Nutt, 2008; Kramer, 2003; Lowenstein, 2005; Wade & Yoder, 1995). Lowenstein (2005) emphasized that “student[s] will learn better from thinking through the process than from being told how to perform it” (p. 71). Kimball and Campbell (2013) have argued that advising should not be delineated by the most recent advising philosophy, but rather it should be an intentional practice whereby advisors respond based on student needs. Drake


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(2013) also suggested that advisors facilitate personalized learning through strategic question-based dialog. Relative to current advising practices at BCCC, in order to develop student responsibility, we must teach students how to make academic decisions rather than tell them the decision they should make. Connecting Academic Advising and Student Success Establishing and understanding the connection between academic advising and student success are foundational to the development of our Quality Enhancement Plan given the inverse relationship between student satisfaction with advising and student success at BCCC. While the debate of whether retention, persistence and completion are accurate benchmarks for measuring success remains a contested topic (Ramaley, 2012), state and federal accountability systems keep the measures in the forefront (Tinto, 2007). However, Cuseo (2007) has pointed out while additional benchmarks are needed, retention scholars have linked retention with successful education for decades. The extent to which academic advising supports and improves student success relies on the definition of student success and correlation between the two. Students are more likely to persist if they experience an engaging and supportive environment. Tinto (1987) posited that students make the decision to leave school for many reasons, most of which he believed were associated with “interaction of the person with other members of the college and the person’s perception or evaluation of the character of those interactions” (p. 127). Cuseo (2003) linked Tinto’s model to effective academic advising strategies, such as educational and career planning, use of campus services, mentoring and non-instructional student-faculty contact, all of which improved student satisfaction. Academic advisors are in a position to develop a connection with students, and this type of personal connection has positive effects on student retention (Council for the Advancement of Standards in Higher Education, 2005; Drake, 2011; Stuart-Hunter & White, 2004). Student Satisfaction and Perception of Value of Advising One of the challenges of linking academic advising to student success is the disconnect between research and theory (Campbell & Nutt, 2008; Cuseo, 2003; Nutt, 2003a; Swecker, Fifolt, & Searby, 2013; Tinto, 2007; Young-Jones, Burt, Dixon, & Hawthorne, 2013). Robbins (2016) stipulated satisfaction and perception of the importance of advising are appropriate for advisor evaluation, not assessment of advising, especially in terms of student learning. In 2008, Campbell and Nutt called for “the identification of measures that go beyond mere measures of satisfaction and facilitate understanding of what and how students are learning what we expect them to learn” (para. 16). White (2015) argued that assessing advising based on satisfaction rather than learning outcomes causes institutions to lose sight of the mission of academic advising. Relevant to BCCC, students complete satisfaction surveys, yet we do not have learning-based outcomes in place to document student learning of advising information; as such our advising satisfaction surveys evaluate advisors, not the effectiveness of our advising. Tinto (2007) recognized the often inverse relationship between satisfaction with advising and retention/completion rates. Bowman and Seifert (2011) confirmed student satisfaction ratings of personal interactions with college faculty and staff do not accurately predict retention and completion. These findings are relevant to BCCC PLAN because our students’ satisfaction with advising is inversely related to our retention and completion data. Our students rank their satisfaction with advising positively, yet low completion rates exist in many programs.


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By developing the Concept of Academic Advising, NACADA (2006) aligned academic advising with teaching and stressed the value of student learning outcomes as local measures of assessment (Campbell & Nutt, 2008). This shift addressed the need to define specific programs and institutional practices that lead to student success (Tinto, 2007). According to He and Huston (2017), measurements of faculty advisor development, in addition to student learning outcomes, are important to move the needle of student success. Advising literature confirms the value of identifying specific strategies and institutional practices that lead to student success. Isolating the number of visits with an advisor, Swecker et al. (2013) observed that each time a first-generation student met with their advisor their odds of being retained increased by 13% (p. 49). Similarly, Klepfer and Hull (2012) studied the impact of advising among low socio-economic status in a two-year school and found students who reported “often” meeting with their advisor were 43% more likely to persist than students who “never” met with their advisor (p. 12). Klepfer and Hull also noted students classified as middle and high socio-economic statuses were 24% and 33%, respectively, more likely to persist than students of the same socio-economic status who “never” met with their advisor (p. 12). Literature related to the inconsistent relationship between student satisfaction and student success suggests BCCC should restructure our advising strategy around an advising mission aligned with measurable student learning outcomes and measurable faculty advisor development outcomes. Implementing an advising as teaching model based on best practices will provide the College with measurements regarding specific desired outcomes. In turn, we will be in a better position to improve student completion. Faculty Advising Faculty are uniquely qualified to be academic advisors. Their experience in the classroom, understanding of learning models and involvement with assessment align with NACADA’s advising as teaching Advising Concept (O’Banion, 2009; Wallace, S. & Wallace, B., 2015; Wiseman & Messitt, 2010). Further, faculty members develop relationships with students in the classroom; these relationships extend to the advising session and engender advisor/student trust (Tinto, 2007). Even so, in focus groups, many BCCC faculty reported feeling unprepared to serve as advisors. Faculty advising literature unanimously supports the notion that faculty advisors must have direct support from student services personnel, such as counselors, financial aid staff and the registrar, in order to connect students to appropriate resources in a timely manner; faculty and staff cannot operate in silos (Allen & Smith, 2008a, 2008b; Crocker, Kahla, & Allen, 2014; He & Hutson, 2017; O’Banion, 2012; Wallace, S. & Wallace, B., 2015; Williamson, Goosen, & Gonzalez, 2014; Wiseman & Messitt, 2010). Likewise, faculty advisors are not full-time advisors; their time is also punctuated by teaching loads and college committee assignments (Allen & Smith, 2008b; Wallace, S. & Wallace, B, 2015). Wiseman and Messitt (2010) contended that schools with faculty-based advising models must commit support resources and services for faculty advisors. As literature about decentralized advising models predict, BCCC advisors expressed frustration with access to student support services and unclear job responsibilities. BCCC PLAN offers a clear schemata of advising philosophy, responsibilities and roles designed to deliver effective advising. The urgency is clear: faculty advisors quickly become ineffective if they are not fully committed to the role of academic advisor (O’Banion, 2009). Developing an institutional culture that supports academic advising lessens the silo-effect innate to decentralized advising models (Allen & Smith, 2008b; Habley, 1994). One strategy to build consistency in academic advising practices across campus emphasizes alignment of the advising mission and goals with the institution’s mission, especially in highly decentralized


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advising models (Campbell & Nutt, 2008). Developing an institutional culture that supports academic advising and involves faculty in advising development and assessment leads to increased faculty interest, support and engagement with the advising role (Allen & Smith, 2008b; He & Hutson, 2017; O’Banion, 2009; Wallace, S. & Wallace, B., 2015). We are making strides toward changing the advising culture at BCCC. Our new mission statement and strategic plan call for a holistic advising process based on best practices. BCCC PLAN is based on a definition of advising that is closely aligned to the College’s mission statement. Advisor Training Advisor training is vital to the success of any academic advising model, yet most schools do not have a comprehensive advisor training program (Campbell & Nutt, 2008; Duslak & McGill, 2014; Folsom, Joslin, & Yoder, 2005; Ford, 2007; Harper & Smith, 2017; Heikkila & McGill, 2013; Higginson, 2000; Hutson, 2013; McClellan, 2007; Nutt, 2003b; Wallace S. & Wallace, B, 2015;). Successful advisor training programs recognize the difference between faculty advisor development for current advisors and advisor training for new advisors (Folsom et al., 2005; Wallace, S. & Wallace B., 2015; Duslak and McGill, 2014). Additionally, Wallace and Wallace articulated that new advisor training should be staggered so as to not overwhelm a new faculty member. BCCC does not provide comprehensive advisor training. New faculty members receive training on information management systems and sporadic professional development activities related to new policies or procedures. Habley (1995) recognized three content areas as foundational to advisor training: concept, information, and relationship. Habley proclaimed that “without understanding (conceptual elements), there is no context for the delivery of services. Without information, there is no substance to advising. And, without personal skills (relational), the quality of the advisee/advisor relationship is left to chance” (p. 76). Advising scholars have studied, applied and, in some cases, expanded Habley’s work in the quest to define best practices for advisor training programs. Currently, BCCC’s advisor training focuses primarily on information-based advising training, so the design of the Advisor Training component of BCCC PLAN will expand training related to conceptual and relational advising skills. Concept Component Habley (1995) focused the concept component on what advisors need to know about the student and the institution’s advising strategy. Higginson (2000) offered specific advising topics relevant to Habley’s model: general understanding of college students and students specific to the institution, students’ education and personal needs, as well as needs of special populations. Relative to the institution’s advising strategy, Higginson (2000) and Ford (2007) suggested advisors need to understand the school’s mission and goals, definition of advising, and responsibilities of advisees and advisors. McClellan (2007) recommend training strategies related to knowledge sharing and acquisition, which can be achieved through active or passive teaching, to develop an advisor’s conceptual knowledge. Information Component Habley (1995) considered the information component to include information that advisors share with students. Higginson (2000) categorized the information component into four areas: “the internal environment, the external environment, student needs, and advisor self-knowledge” (p. 303). Higginson suggested that topics relative to the information component should include: academic integrity, disability accommodations, course schedule details, degree requirements, policies, procedures, student handbooks, employment outlook projections, career and personal decision-making, advising technology tools and learning styles. Given the vast amount of knowledge needed in the information training component, Wallace and Wallace (2015) and


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Folsom et al. (2005) developed advisor training guides which scaffold information in small, meaningful chunks. Historically, advisor training programs have focused predominantly on the information component; however, scholars have cautioned that focusing too heavily on the information component short-changes the other components, especially the relational component (Ford, 2007; McClellan, 2007; Nutt, 2003b). Relational Component Habley (1995) outlined the relational component to include behaviors advisors need to effectively convey material gained from the conceptual and informational components. Higginson (2000) connected this component to creating personal, trust-based relationships with students. Hutson (2013) and Nutt (2003b) related the component to interpersonal communication skills. Potential topics to support this component include: rapport building, listening skills, problem solving, and interview strategies (Higginson, 2000; McClellan, 2007). Successful training techniques include: role-play, shadow experiences, case studies (Duslak & McGill, 2014; McClellan, 2007), interactive simulations, and observing master advisors (Duslak & McGill, 2014; Folsom et al., 2005). Career Advising Best Practices McCalla-Wriggins (2009) observed that the lack of structured career advising places students (and, thus, advisors) at a deficit: “Since students often are not able to describe their skills, interests, values, and passions, they do not have a personal reference point from which to evaluate potential academic and career options” (Impact). In order to offer truly effective and holistic academic advising at BCCC, a more systematic approach to identifying career interests and personal aptitudes is required. That career advising should be considered an integral part of academic advising is not a recent observation. O’Banion, in his 1972 work on academic advising, identified the exploration of vocational goals as an important step to be addressed in the advising process. This idea is perhaps most fully realized in Gordon’s 2006 publication of Career Advising: An Academic Advisor’s Guide when she suggests that “all students need career advising” (p. 5). By 2007, as reported in a NACADA survey, 74% of responding academic advisors agreed that “helping students make career decisions was important to their role as academic advisors” (McCalla-Wriggins, 2009, Conclusion). Given BCCC’s institutional mission to support workforce development, addressing the career goals of our students as part of our academic advising strategy is a central concern. Research indicates that both motivation and academic performance are improved when students have informed educational and career goals and expectations (Robinson & Glanzer, 2016). Furthermore, as Nitecki (2011) identified, students in heavily career-focused programs such as nursing or law enforcement have relatively higher success rates at community colleges (p. 99), and she theorizes that such students maintain interest in their academic program “because of early exposure to career-focused coursework” (p. 100). Beyond a simple identification of career goals and a choice of academic program, however, students can benefit from greater insight into their personal interests, skills, values, and passions. As Gordon (2006) noted, some students “choose an academic major based on very little information about what the curriculum entails and how their own strengths and limitations might predict satisfaction and success” (p. 5). Such an uninformed choice, as frequently observed by BCCC faculty and staff, often results in poor academic performance and failure to


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persist in an academic program. However, as McCalla-Wriggins (2009) recognized, “students who know who they are and understand the various vocational options that support their strengths, skills, interests, and passion have greater potential to make academic decisions that have personal meaning” (Impact). This idea is well supported by research from positive psychology, which informs the related approaches of strengths-based advising (Schreiner & Anderson, 2005) and appreciative advising (Bloom, Hutson, & He, 2008). And perhaps most importantly for BCCC, students “are more likely to be retained and persist to graduation” (McCalla-Wriggins, 2009, Impact). Advising Guide Best Practice When fully implemented, an advising syllabus communicates an institutional commitment to advising through close alignment with the institution’s mission (Campbell & Nutt, 2008; Wallace, 2007). As such, everyone on campus is invested in advising and moving students toward success. Including an Advising Guide component in BCCC PLAN operationalizes Goal A, Objective 2, of the new strategic plan by clearly explaining our advising program. The advising syllabus can take many shapes. Some schools design a document to mirror the campus syllabus template; others opt for a dynamic document similar to a guide or workbook (Reynolds, 2013; Trabant, 2006). Baer and Duin (2014) conveyed that a personalized learning system, such as a workbook, can provide a career pathway when guided by an advisor invested in student success. At BCCC, an Advising Guide would serve multiple purposes that are identified in the literature, such as establishing roles and responsibilities and providing checklists to help students plan their academic program. An advising syllabus/guide can clearly establish roles and responsibilities of advisors and advisees (Campbell & Nutt, 2008) and help students “understand that success is [their] responsibility and that the advisor is a partner in that success” (Wallace, 2007, para. 7). Likewise, an advising syllabus/guide is a means of communicating dual expectations so that the advisor and student are both held accountable (Trabant, 2006). When we spell out a list of responsibilities, students quickly realize their own accountability. Thus, as Trabant explained, the syllabus may serve as an opportunity to thwart inappropriate expectations. Yet, simply listing responsibilities of each party may not engender learning. Advisors should consider Reynolds’ advice and opt to list “benefits of advising for students or a list of circumstances in which a student might want to consult an advisor (for issues not related to registration)” (2013, p. 37). One of the most important goals of advising should be teaching students how to become responsible students and advisees (Baer & Duin, 2014; Campbell & Nutt, 2008; O’Banion, 2012; Reynolds, 2013; Trabant, 2006; Wallace, 2007). When we fail to develop advisee responsibility, as Wallace argues, students come to advising sessions unprepared and sessions focus too heavily on registration. An advising syllabus/guide explains the goals and student learning objectives of the advising relationship (Campbell & Nutt, 2008; Reynolds, 2013). As such, students learn what to expect from advising and to value the one-on-one communication and academic structure provided by the advising relationship (Wallace, 2007). Perhaps, most important to BCCC, an advising syllabus, or guide, establishes expected outcomes for assessment. Implementation of an advising syllabus/guide also carries challenges. Trabant (2006) identified the following points for institutions to consider:


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Determining how to distribute the advising syllabus

Need for a culture shift for the campus to embrace an advising syllabus

Syllabus format

Unlike a classroom, there are no consequences for students not meeting advising syllabus expectations.

Determining content Assessing efficacy of an advising

syllabus NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising (2017b) provides sample advising syllabi from nineteen member colleges and universities. The compilation represents an even split between schools using a traditional syllabus-based document and schools using a dynamic guide/workbook tool. Most often, community colleges deploy an advising guide/workbook format (e.g., Lane Community College and Owen Community College), while four-year schools tend to focus on roles, responsibilities and outcomes in a traditional syllabus format (e.g., Arizona State University, Boise State University and University of Wisconsin at Madison). Moraine Valley Community College received the NACADA Innovation of the Year Award in 2013 for its academic advising syllabus. Assessment feedback for Moraine Valley’s advising syllabus revealed that 96% of the respondents felt that the advising syllabus was a useful tool (Golk, 2013, slide 11). BCCC believes that utilization of an Advising Guide to achieve goal-based advising may optimize the path to degree completion and better connect the advisor and student. In North Carolina, advising syllabi/guides have been adopted as part of the Quality Enhancement Plans at South Piedmont Community College (2012) and Craven Community College (2016). South Piedmont’s QEP employs an advising workbook with semester-by-semester checklists and space for course planning. South Piedmont’s QEP Director associated the implementation of their advising workbook with a decrease in the number of courses taken outside the major (J.A. Young, personal communication, April 9, 2018). The advising syllabus designed for Craven Community College’s QEP utilizes a traditional syllabus approach without checklists or course planning features. BCCC implemented WebAdvisor/Self-Service online self-registration in 2017, and while the system offers planning tools, students have not fully utilized the features. An Advising Guide may help students focus on more than one semester at a time in course planning. Additionally, BCCC is in the process of redesigning our college success courses (ACA 111 and ACA 122). While the courses require students to assemble academic degree plans, we lack a systematic way to integrate the activity into the advising process. An online portfolio-driven advising workbook may bridge this gap. Course Management System Platform Using course management systems in academic advising is relatively new in higher education. Most of the literature reflects theory rather than evidence that addresses the derived value of course management systems in academic advising (Ambrose & Ambrose, 2013; Jones & Hansen, 2014; Steele, 2016). Researchers at Utah State University reported qualitative findings that students embraced using their Canvas course management system in advising, yet the campus experienced difficulty teaching students how to use the technology (Hall, Lawver, McMurray, & Hawley, 2017). Feghali, Zbib, and Hallal (2011) reported student satisfaction with a locally-developed online advising system. Online components of academic advising should support the overall advising mission, not replace face-to-face interaction (Ambrose & Ambrose, 2013; Feghali et al., 2011). Schaumleffel (2009) suggested that advisors use course management systems to email advisees, to post


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announcements, to post documents and to track office visits in the gradebook. Course management systems may also be used to post calendar dates, to link to other campus resources and to provide portfolio-based records of student progress (Hall et al., 2017). Portfolio tools can be used to collect documentation to support student learning outcomes (Ambrose & Ambrose, 2013; Steele, 2016). BCCC advisors do not have an efficient way to access advisee lists and contact information to facilitate reliable electronic communication with advisees. Advisors can access advisee information in the student information system, but the system does not offer efficient means to manage advisee lists through advisor credentials. As such, maintaining a current email list of advisees is tedious. However, Colleague, the student information system, has the ability to integrate and synchronize with Blackboard. Therefore, we believe Blackboard offers a reliable, accurate means to communicate with advisees, especially through email and announcements. Since institutions use a course management system in most classes, students are familiar with the tool and would see advising information each time they enter the course management system (Schaumleffel, 2009). As such, advising-based sites must be designed similarly to other campus course management sites (Herron, 2010). Specific to Blackboard, Jones and Hansen (2014) encouraged the use of Blackboard Collaborate for synchronous and asynchronous video and audio communication with advisees. Somewhat like a face-to-face advising session, Jones and Hansen reported that Blackboard Collaborate creates personal interaction and relationship-building, especially for distance education students. BCCC recently upgraded to Blackboard Collaborate Ultra, which features easy to launch video and audio sessions with recording capability. Adding Blackboard Collaborate Ultra to our advising tools through BCCC PLAN will help us deliver effective advising to students who are unable to come to campus. As noted earlier, most literature connecting advising and course management systems is theory, yet pearls of wisdom emerge from the two documented studies: Hall et al. (2017) reported that Utah State University students suggested the following improvements to their initial Canvas-based advising site: Include access to career information Teach students how to use the site Integrate access to curriculum plans

To maximize the effectiveness of a course management system-based advising site and to ensure positive initial reception of the tool, Hall et al. (2017) and Feghali et al. (2011) recommended usability testing prior to campus-wide tool release. Similarly, a frequently asked questions page may help students learn to navigate the site (Hall et al., 2017). The QEP committee carefully analyzed academic advising literature related to advising theory and advising best practices to form a comprehensive foundation for developing a plan to leverage academic advising to improve student success at our institution. The next section, Actions to be Implemented, provides details and implementation timelines of BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator.


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ACTIONS TO BE IMPLEMENTED

BCCC PLAN focuses on four components that will improve the academic advising strategy on our campus, as called for in the 2018-2023 Strategic Plan: 1) preparing advisors for their roles through new Advisor Training and advisor development for current advisors, 2) establishing advising program goals and Student Learning Outcomes that connect advising to teaching through an Advising Guide, 3) providing Focus 2 Career, a career interests and skills assessment inventory, to help students select a major related to their career interests and skill level and 4) launching Blackboard Advising Sites for every advisor to foster communication and information sharing in the advising relationship. Given the interconnectedness of the four BCCC PLAN components, the QEP committee has designed an aggressive implementation plan to launch components. While we recognize that BCCC PLAN is a five-year plan, the components are designed to work together; staggering the launch of components would weaken the overall project. Therefore, in Fall 2018, we will focus on several preliminary tasks which must be completed prior to implementation of the components, such as curricular changes in the Associate of Applied Science in Nursing program of study to require a college success course. Likewise, we must train advisors to use Focus 2 Career, establish a common Academic Plan Assignment and develop content for new Advisor Training sessions. Completion of these preliminary tasks will allow us to launch all BCCC PLAN components in Spring 2019. Implementation of BCCC PLAN follows the same workgroup leadership structure used in development of the QEP. With this in mind, the Actions to be Implemented section is organized by BCCC PLAN components and includes specific actions and timelines for each of the four components. Please note, a full Assessment Plan begins on page 49. I. Advisor Training and Development In order to change the culture of advising on our campus, we must provide training and professional development opportunities that establish institutional expectations for advisors and student services staff to unify the college as one body, focused on our students. To achieve this goal, this QEP will implement strategic Advisor Training for new and current advisors. The QEP Advisor Training Workgroup Lead, in conjunction with the Vice President of Academics, will direct BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component. The Advisor Training Workgroup Lead will coordinate with the Vice President of Student Services and Deans to identify student services personnel and highly qualified advisors to serve on this workgroup to design and deliver Advisor Training. Activities will include planning, delivery and evaluation of Advisor Training activities and assessment of Advisor Training Process Delivery Outcomes. A train-the-trainer approach will be employed to prepare highly qualified advisors to share their expertise with other advisors. Experienced advisors currently teach all sections of BCCC’s college success courses (ACA 111 and ACA 122). This group will be the first focus for Advisor Training to establish advising consistency and prepare these individuals to share their expertise with other advisors. To this end, funds are allocated to send up to seven advisors to NACADA annual and regional meetings every year. Initial attendees will include members of BCCC PLAN’s leadership team and highly qualified advisors currently teaching a student success


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course. Thereafter, NACADA external training opportunities will be available to advisors, based on consensus from the Academic Deans, the QEP Director and the Vice President of Academics. Faculty advisors who participate in NACADA external training opportunities will be expected to develop and present a training session as part of BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component and serve as a resource for other faculty advisors. Session topics will be identified by the Advisor Training Workgroup. BCCC PLAN’s budget includes a stipend for faculty advisors who provide a training session and serve in a resource capacity. Additionally, the QEP Director and a workgroup leader represent the College on the North Carolina Community College System Advising Redesign Project, a system-wide effort to improve student success and completion. The group holds monthly seminars designed to empower institutional representatives to customize advising strategies and share knowledge with their campus in a train-the-trainer model. BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator aligns with the North Carolina Community College System Advising Redesign Project’s vision to focus on intrusive/proactive advising strategies related to career and academic planning, as well as timely communication. Other resources that will be used for Advisor Training include:

NACADA national and regional meeting attendance NACADA print materials NACADA speaker’s bureau Focus 2 Career instructor materials North Carolina Community College System Student Success Center North Carolina Community College System Advising Redesign materials North Carolina Community College System Advising Association materials

Advisor Training Tracks Using the components for advisor training that Habley (1994) identified as important, BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component will focus on developing advisors’ 1) conceptual knowledge, 2) informational knowledge and 3) relational knowledge. The QEP team recognizes the need for training based on each advisor’s experience level: new faculty advisors need considerable conceptual and informational knowledge prior to engaging in student advisement, while experienced advisors may have sufficient informational knowledge and lack understanding of BCCC’s advising concept and relational knowledge to make lasting connections in an advising relationship. To this end, BCCC PLAN includes two tracks for Advisor Training and development. New Advisor Training A faculty member’s first year on campus can be overwhelming; therefore, new faculty members will not begin formal Advisor Training until they have at least one semester of teaching experience at BCCC. Since most new hire full-time faculty members join the College in the fall semester, formal new Advisor Training will be conducted in the Spring. Initially, deans may request new Advisor Training for recent hires who have more than one semester of BCCC teaching experience. Training will be delivered through monthly workshops and online modules. Topics for new Advisor Training will include: Conceptual Knowledge: Information advisors need to know about students and the institution’s advising strategy (parentheses note subject-matter experts who will be involved in designing and delivery of training).


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BCCC’s advising definition, advising goals and Student Learning Outcomes (QEP team) How the advising mission connects with BCCC’s overall institutional mission

(Administration/QEP team) Responsibilities of advisors/advisees (QEP team, highly qualified advisors) Characteristics of college student needs (Student Services campus experts) Student development theory (Student Services Counselors) Advising theories (QEP team, Student Services Counselors) Demographics and characteristics of BCCC students (Dean of Institutional

Effectiveness)

Teaching techniques: active and passive teaching techniques

Informational Knowledge: Information advisors will share with students Institutional advising policies and procedures (Deans/Administration) Degree requirements and curriculum flows (Deans/Administration) College support services and resources (Student Services subject-matter experts) Employment projections (Student Services Counselors, QEP Focus 2 Career

Workgroup) Linkage between personal skills and career selection (Student Services Counselors,

QEP Focus 2 Career Workgroup) Advising-specific technologies: Web Advisor, Self-Service, Colleague, Focus 2 Career,

BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites (Campus subject-matter experts based on technology)

Learning styles (Student Services Counselors, Learning Enhancement Center Director) Teaching techniques: active and passive teaching (may include shadowing, role playing, case studies, and best practice presentations by highly qualified BCCC advisors)

Relational Knowledge: Behavioral skills that advisors should possess in order to share conceptual and informational content with students to foster rapport building Rapport building (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) Listening skills (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) Problem solving skills (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) Interview strategies (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) Teaching techniques: primarily active teaching to include: shadowing, role playing, case studies, and best practice presentations by highly qualified BCCC advisors)

Development for Current Advisors Current advisors with at least one year teaching experience at BCCC will participate in required advising professional development sessions. During Year One, topics will focus on the conceptual knowledge outlined for New Advisor training, informational knowledge that is new to campus, and relational knowledge. After Year One, advisor development for current advisors will address informational knowledge that is new to campus and relational knowledge. Throughout, material from new Advisor Training sessions will be available to current advisors in the BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site resource folder. Topics for year one: Conceptual Knowledge: Information advisors need to know about students and the institution’s advising strategy


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BCCC’s advising definition, advising goals and Student Learning Outcomes (QEP team) How the advising mission connects with BCCC’s overall institutional mission

(Administration/QEP team) Responsibilities of advisors/advisees (QEP team, highly qualified advisors) Characteristics of college student needs (Student Services campus experts) Advising theories (QEP team, Student Services Counselors) Student development theory (Student Services Counselors) Demographics and characteristics of BCCC students (Dean of Institutional

Effectiveness) Teaching techniques: active and passive teaching techniques

Informational Knowledge: Information advisors will share with students New institutional advising policies and procedures (Deans/Administration) New advising-specific technologies: Focus 2 Career, BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising

Sites (campus subject-matter experts based on technology)

Teaching techniques: active and passive teaching (may include shadowing, role playing, case studies, and best practice presentations by highly qualified BCCC advisors)

Relational Knowledge: Behavioral skills that advisors should possess in order to share conceptual and informational content with students to foster rapport building Rapport building (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) listening skills (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) problem solving skills (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) interview strategies (Student Services Counselors, highly qualified advisors) Teaching techniques: primarily active teaching to include: shadowing, role playing, case studies, and best practice presentations by highly qualified BCCC advisors)

The Advisor Training component will be assessed by three Process Delivery Outcomes to help the College improve the effectiveness of Advisor Training. Unlike Student Learning Outcomes, faculty advisors do not bear responsibility for gathering or analyzing data related to Process Delivery Outcomes. Instead, BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training Workgroup Lead, in conjunction with the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, will gather and analyze data. PDO 1: Advisors will provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources. PDO 2: Advisors will employ collaborative advising strategies to guide students to make responsible academic decisions. PDO 3: Advisors will demonstrate relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship. These Process Delivery Outcomes will be evaluated by direct and indirect measures that provide quantitative and qualitative data. Quantitative data will be gleaned from exit surveys after Advisor Training sessions, and students will be given the opportunity to complete the NACADA Academic Advising Inventory every spring. BCCC PLAN will host a student focus group every fall. Focus group questions will include items that will provide indirect/qualitative examples of how advising is conducted at BCCC.


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Data will be used to improve the Advisor Training component of BCCC PLAN and to share progress toward improving BCCC’s advising culture with the College’s stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees. The BCCC PLAN Assessment Plan (page 49) includes outcome mapping, measurements, instruments, timeframe and expected levels of performance for each outcome. Advisor Training Timeline (see Table 9) The implementation timeline for Advisor Training in the Planning Year includes tasks to design training content. Using this timeline, all advisors will be fully trained by the end of Spring 2020. At that point, training for current advisors will shift to focus on new policies, processes and relational knowledge. Training for New Advisors will occur every Spring beginning in 2019. Table 9: Advisor Training Timeline

Year Fall Spring Summer Planning year

2018 2019 2019

Increase size of Advisor Training Workgroup with input from VP/Student Services and Deans

Develop New Advisor Training Content and Modules

Develop Advisor Training session exit survey

Develop and begin college success course instructor training for Advising Guide and Focus 2 Career

Begin Current Advisor “Advising Culture” of BCCC PLAN Professional Development at convocation

Send highly qualified advisors to NACADA Annual Meeting.

Implement first annual New Advisor Training

Gather exit survey data

Continue ACA Instructor Training Develop Current

Advisor Training Content and Modules based on New Advisor Training and college success course instructor training

Deliver Focus 2 Career and Advising Guide overview Professional Development for current advisors

Send highly qualified advisors to NACADA Region 3 conference.

Analyze data; evaluate and improve Advisor Training content as needed.

Develop Student Focus Group Questions


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Year Fall Spring Summer Year One 2019 2020 2020

Implement Current Advisor Training Conduct Student

Focus Group Send highly qualified

advisors to NACADA Annual Meeting

Continue Current Advisor Training Hold Annual New

Advisor Training Administer NACADA

Academic Advising Inventory Send highly qualified

advisors to NACADA Region 3 Conference

Analyze data; evaluate and improve Advisor Training as needed.

Year Two

2020 2021 2021 Continue Current

Advisor Training Conduct Student



Continue Current Advisor Training

Hold Annual New Advisor Training

Administer NACADA Academic Advising Inventory Send highly qualified

advisors to NACADA Region 3 Conference

Analyze data; evaluate and revise Advisor Training as needed.

Year Three



Focus Group Send highly-qualified




Administer NACADA Academic Advising Inventory

Send highly-qualified advisors to NACADA Region 3 Conference


Year Four

2022 2023 2023

Continue Current Advisor Training Conduct Student






Send highly qualified advisors to NACADA Region 3 Conference



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Year Fall Spring Summer Year Five








Send highly qualified advisors to NACADA Region 3 Conference


Contribute to five-year report

II. Advising Guide The QEP committee researched best practices for advising syllabi and reviewed existing tools from NACADA exemplars and schools within the North Carolina Community College System. Based on best practice research, the committee has designed BCCC PLAN Advising Guide to formalize our advising strategy. The Advising Guide is based on the advising definition, which was informed by broad-campus input in campus focus groups and refined by the QEP committee in 2017: BCCC Advising Definition: Advising is an ongoing, multifaceted, and collaborative relationship between student and advisor— involving decision-making, planning, guidance, resource utilization, and progress monitoring — designed to aid the student in successful completion of educational, career, and life goals. The Advising Guide will help BCCC cultivate specific institutional practices and student behaviors that are known to influence student success. Our BCCC PLAN Advising Guide clearly outlines advisor and advisee responsibilities. The Advising Guide will serve as a primary resource for all college success courses, providing information about campus policies and resources, as well as checklists to guide students through each semester of their curriculum. Further, the guide includes planning worksheets to help students fulfill their responsibility to be prepared for advisor meetings. To facilitate timeliness and accuracy, the document will reside in each student’s BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site as a fillable, printable document. The document will be updated by the Advising Guide Workgroup as needed, and the most current version will be auto-populated in BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites. The Advising Guide will centralize information to assist advisors and college success course instructors to provide consistent information regarding policies, procedures and student support services. When a student updates or completes items in the Advising Guide, their work will be saved as a portfolio document that their advisor can access. The QEP Advising Guide Workgroup composed a draft Advising Guide that integrated feedback from student and employee focus groups, feedback from divisional meetings and feedback from one-on-one meetings with the Director of Admissions and Director of Counseling, as well as advisors from every campus division. Based on feedback from QEP workgroup leaders, the draft was revised and submitted to the full QEP Committee for feedback in April 2018. The Advising Guide was revised in Fall 2018 to incorporate feedback from students and instructors of the college success courses (ACA 111 and ACA 122). Appendix G contains the outline of the Advising Guide.


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The Advising Guide Workgroup Leader and the Advising Guide Workgroup will facilitate BCCC PLAN’s Advising Guide implementation according to the Advising Guide Timeline (see Table 10). Activities will include coordinating the revisions, implementation and evaluation of BCCC PLAN Advising Guide activities and assessment of Student Learning Outcomes 1, 2 and 4. Prior to full implementation of the Advising Guide, we must revise all curriculum flow charts in all programs to include a student success course during the first semester of enrollment. Currently, all programs except Associate of Applied Science in Nursing require a student success course, but we do not have a campus-wide requirement for the student success course to be taken during the first semester. The Dean of Allied Health and Public Services is in the process of developing a college success course for the Associate of Applied Science in Nursing program. While the Advising Guide will serve as the advising resource manual for the college, this BCCC PLAN component is also designed to improve student responsibility, as reflected in SLO 1: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions and SLO 2: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions. These outcomes seek to effect positive changes in student behaviors which are linked to student success. These Student Learning Outcomes will be assessed by direct and indirect measures that provide quantitative and qualitative data. The NACADA Academic Advising Inventory will be used to track learning with regard to attending advising sessions. An Advising Session Log (Appendix I) will track all advising sessions to document the number of advising sessions held and whether students prepare tentative course schedules prior to registration-related advising sessions. As students learn the importance of advising and the advising expectations at BCCC, we anticipate they will be more likely to practice these responsible behaviors. BCCC PLAN will host an advisor focus group every fall to gather qualitative feedback regarding student growth toward practicing responsibility, including examples of how and how often students take responsibility for meeting with their advisor. The Advising Guide is also mapped to SLO 4: Students will develop a coherent academic plan aligned with their educational/career goals that meets program requirements. Currently, all college success courses have a required Academic Plan Assignment; however, we do not have a common campus-wide assignment that is used in every class. In Fall 2018, the Advising Guide Workgroup worked with college success course instructors to develop a campus-wide common Academic Plan Assignment and Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric that utilize the Advising Guide checklists. The assignment will be implemented in a cross-section of college success courses in Spring 2019 to gather baseline data. Full implementation will follow in Fall 2019. College success course instructors will implement the Academic Plan Assignment in all college success courses. The assignment requires students to integrate their program of study requirements and future plans (university transfer or workforce requirements) to develop a semester-by-semester academic plan that will lead to timely program completion. The assignment requires students to share their academic plan with their advisor, thereby closing the gap between work completed in college success courses and one-on-one advising sessions. Thus, we will make strides toward developing a campus culture that recognizes academic advising as essential to student success. Student Learning Outcome 4 will be evaluated using direct measures that provide quantitative data to measure student learning. The Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric (Appendix H) will measure students’ ability to create a coherent academic plan that meets program requirements. College success course instructors will evaluate student learning and enter rubric


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scores in Blackboard; the Blackboard Administrator will aggregate campus-wide data through a Blackboard Rubric Evaluation Report. Further evidence of students’ ability to develop a coherent academic plan will be measured by enrollment in a college-level English course. Currently, a large percentage of students delay enrolling in the first required college-level English course. This course is part of a two-course sequence and serves as a pre-requisite for several courses and programs. Delayed enrollment in the course creates barriers toward timely program completion. We anticipate that students who complete the Academic Plan Assignment will enroll in the first required college-level English course earlier in their program, reducing time to completion. The Advising Guide Workgroup Leader and Advising Guide Workgroup will analyze data for SLOs 1, 2 and 4. Data will be used to improve the Advisor Guide component of BCCC PLAN and to share progress toward improving BCCC’s advising culture with the College’s stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees. Table 10: Advising Guide Timeline

Year Fall Spring Summer Planning Year

2018 2019 2019 Develop campus-wide Academic Plan Assignment and Scoring Rubric Revise Advising Guide draft. Develop Advising Session Log Initiate process to require a college success course in the first semester of all degree programs.

Finalize process to require college success course during first semester enrollment. Pilot Advising Guide in college success course. Pilot campus-wide Academic Plan Assignment Gather Academic Plan Scoring Rubric data baseline data Implement Advising Session Log and gather baseline data.

Publish college success course requirements in catalog. Document college success course first semester requirement on curriculum flowsheets Analyze data to establish baseline. Develop Advisor Focus Group questions

Year One

2019 2020 2020 Begin requiring college success course in first semester for all new students. Fully implement Advising Guide Fully implement Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Conduct Advisor Focus Group Gather Advising Session Log data

Continue Advising Guide Implementation Analyze Focus Group data Continue Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Gather Advising Session Log data

Aggregate Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric data Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Advising Guide elements as needed


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Year Two 2020 2021 2021

Continue Advising Guide Implementation Continue Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Conduct Advisor Focus Group Gather Advising Session Log data

Continue Advising Guide Implementation Gather Advising Session Log data Continue Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Analyze Focus Group data


Year Three

2021 2022 2022 Continue Advising Guide Implementation Continue Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Conduct Advisor Focus Group Gather Advising Session Log data



Year Four

2022 2023 2023 Continue Advising Guide Implementation Continue Academic Plan Assignment and data collection Conduct Advisor Focus Group Gather Advising Session Log data


Aggregate Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric data Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Advising guide elements as needed

Year Five

2023 2024 2024 Continue Advising Guide Implementation Continue Academic Plan Assignment and Data collection Conduct Advisor Focus Group Gather Advising Session Log data


Aggregate Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric Data Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Advising Guide elements as needed Contribute to five-year report

III. Focus 2 Career Addressing stakeholders’ concerns regarding the lack of career advising, the QEP committee reviewed best practice literature to understand the connection between career/skills inventories and student success. Indeed, research confirms that student success improves when students have access to career advising and reflect on their personal strengths and weaknesses. Given BCCC’s institutional mission to support workforce development, addressing the career goals of our students as part of our academic advising strategy is a central concern.


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After a thorough evaluation by the Career Interests/Skills Inventory Workgroup, considering over 15 different career and personality tools, Focus 2 Career, a computer-assisted career guidance system (CACGS), emerged as a clear choice for our needs for a number of reasons. In our view, chief among this platform’s strengths is its exploration not only of career interests but also of personalities, values, and skills. This platform combines multiple levels of self-assessment with practical career research, integrating the two into a seamless package to benefit both students and advisors in their advising sessions. Furthermore, Focus 2 Career offers a number of practical and logistical advantages over other inventory tools. First, online access to the system offers us a simple integration of Focus 2 Career via our BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site, and will simplify deployment to students both on and off campus. This integration provides all students, current and incoming, immediate access to the assessment tools at all points in their academic careers. Second, the workgroup particularly found the comprehensive reporting function of the system conducive to student use and beneficial to the portfolio that students will assemble as part of the BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site. Finally, the customizations available in Focus 2 Career—career suggestions tied to specific academic programs offered at the college, links to local program information, and visual branding of the web interface—offer BCCC multiple ways to integrate the service into a coherent advising strategy. Also, as with many open-source resources, results are often superficial and inconsistent. However, Focus 2 Career has been nationally validated and links directly with the U.S. Department of Labor ONET database of job and occupational information. The Focus 2 Career Workgroup Lead and the Focus 2 Career Workgroup will facilitate BCCC PLAN’s Focus 2 Career component according to the Focus 2 Career Timeline (see Table 11). Activities will include planning, implementation and evaluation of Focus 2 Career activities and assessment of SLO 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values, and skills. Focus 2 Career will be formally integrated in the curricula of all college success courses. Our college success course instructors are faculty members who teach in various disciplines; therefore, few have career planning training. To ensure consistency and maximize the value of the career planning component of college success courses, Focus 2 Career training for college success course instructors will include access to instructional materials provided by Focus 2 Career, including lesson plans, PowerPoint presentations, handouts and a companion student workbook. As a group, college success course instructors will select which Focus 2 Career instructional resources they wish to incorporate in the course, and those materials will be uploaded in the Blackboard instructor resource folder for our college success courses (ACA 111 and ACA 122). Currently, our college success courses use various open-source career inventory assessments, but we do not have a systematic way to share results with advisors. The Focus 2 Career administrative panel allows us to customize filters and groups within the instrument to maximize usefulness to advisors and simplify assessment reporting. Likewise, we will be able to filter results on the system-level to assemble cohort data for each year of implementation. During the initial sign-in procedure, students will be prompted to identify their first semester at BCCC (e.g., Fall 2019), college success course instructor’s name and their advisor’s name. These filters and groups will be used to give individuals access to results relevant to their BCCC role. College success course instructors will have access to inventory results for their students, and advisors will have access to inventory results for their advisees. Since BCCC counselors provide more


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intensive one-on-one career counseling on a referral basis, they will have access to Focus 2 Career inventory results for all students. Since Focus 2 Career is highly customizable, we will phase in the instrument’s tools gradually to allow the Focus 2 Career workgroup time to customize institutional components, such as links to BCCC programs of study. In the Planning Year and Fall of Year One, we will implement the tool’s five inventories for career interests, personality, leisure interests, values and skills. This level of deployment will allow students to view and research specific career and job recommendations that align with their results to assist them to achievement of SLO 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values, and skills. Later, in Spring of Year One, the workgroup will deploy a fully customized version of Focus 2 Career that allows students to view BCCC programs of study that align with their inventory results and Focus 2 Career occupational recommendations. The Focus 2 Career component of BCCC PLAN will be assessed by SLO 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values, and skills. This Student Learning Outcome will be evaluated using measures that provide quantitative data. Focus 2 Career’s Career Readiness Inventory will be used in the college success courses to gather pre/post test evidence to assess growth of students’ ability to select educational and career goals aligned with their interests, personality, values and skills. College Success Course instructors will administer the pre-test in week two of the semester, and the post test will be administered in week sixteen. The Focus 2 Career Workgroup lead will aggregate data from the pre and post tests using Focus 2 Career’s administrator dashboard. The Academic Plan Scoring Rubric, to be completed by college success course instructors in Blackboard, will be used to gather direct, quantitative evidence of students’ ability to select a program of study that aligns with the students’ evaluation of their interests, personality, values and skills. The Blackboard Administrator will aggregate data from the Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric by preparing a system Blackboard Rubric Evaluation Report. The Advising Session Log will track the percentage of advisees who attend an advising session who designate a program of study aligned with their educational/career goals. As students participate in active instruction using Focus 2 Career in college success courses, we anticipate that more students will select relevant programs of study. The Focus 2 Career Workgroup Lead will aggregate and analyze Advising Session Log data.


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Table 11: Focus 2 Career Timeline Year Fall Spring Summer Planning Year

2018 2019 2019 Purchase Focus 2 Career License Train college success course instructors to use Focus 2 Career Pilot Focus 2 Career in two college success courses.

Analyze pilot results

Begin customization of Focus 2 Career Implement Focus 2 Career inventories in three college success courses Conduct Focus 2 Career professional development session for advisors Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data to establish baseline. Gather Advising Session Log data to establish baseline data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric baseline data

Complete Focus 2 Career customization Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Focus 2 Career component as needed.

Year One 2019 2020 2020 Fully Implement Focus 2 Career inventories and program of study recommendations in college success course Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data

Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data

Aggregate Focus 2 Career Pre/Post Test data Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Focus 2 Career component as needed.

Year Two 2020 2021 2021 Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data Gather Advising Session Log data



Year Three 2021 2022 2022 Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation

Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation

Aggregate Focus 2 Career Pre/Post Test data


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Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data

Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data

Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Focus 2 Career component as needed.

Year Four

2022 2023 2023 Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data



Year Five

2023 2024 2024 Continue Focus 2 Career Implementation Gather pre/post test Career Readiness data. Gather Advising Session Log data Gather Academic Plan Assignment Rubric data


Aggregate Focus 2 Career Pre/Post Test data Analyze all data; evaluate and improve Focus 2 Career component as needed. Contribute to five-year report

IV. Blackboard Advising Sites Our institution maintains a full subscription to Blackboard for our campus-wide course management system. Configuring Blackboard to support our QEP allows the college to maximize our investment in Blackboard, thereby significantly reducing the financial commitment to implement BCCC PLAN. All academic advisors are faculty members who use Blackboard in their classes, so the learning curve to implement BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites is minimal. While little research exists about configuring course management systems for advising, theory and a few case studies support the practice. After considerable research and hands-on experimentation, the QEP team designed the BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site template as an intuitive, ready-to-use tool that will immediately improve advising communication and serve as a platform to connect advisors with BCCC PLAN tools deployed in the student success classes. Implementation of BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will be coordinated by the QEP Director and Focus 2 Career Workgroup Leader with support from the Blackboard Administrator and the Network Administrator. Activities will include planning, implementation and evaluation of BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site activities and assessment of Process Delivery Outcome 4.


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Since Blackboard is populated through Colleague, our student data system, we have the ability to filter students by advisor, much like we filter by course registration, through an Informer Report. Results of the Informer Report will be used to enroll students in a BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site that is facilitated by their advisor. BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will be ongoing, meaning sites will not be punctuated by ending dates the way course enrollment ceases at the end of a semester. As such, students will remain enrolled in their advisor’s BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site as long as they are pursuing their program of study. Students who stop out for longer than three semesters will be removed from the site until they reactivate their admission application. The three semester stop out period will ensure that we do not exceed campus-wide Blackboard data parameters. The BCCC Network Administrator will be responsible for maintaining the Informer Report that sorts advisees by advisor, and the Blackboard Administrator will ensure that students are populated in the correct BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site. When a Change of Program Request is processed, Colleague is manually updated to reflect an advisor of record in the new program of study. Colleague syncs with Blackboard every fifteen minutes to maintain course enrollment across campus; therefore, our BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will have the same fluidity. When a Change of Program Request is processed, a student will be seamlessly removed from their current BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site and enrolled in a site associated with their new advisor. BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will be based on a template created and tested by the QEP Director and Focus 2 Career Workgroup Leader. The initial template structure, without the Advising Guide and Focus 2 Career, was used for communication purposes with the QEP Director’s advisees during the 2017-2018 academic year. During testing, the template was revised based on feedback from students, the QEP team and advisors in all academic divisions. Advisors will have the ability to configure sites according to their discipline or program of study; however, template components related to the QEP, including the Advising Guide and Focus 2 Career, may not be altered. Thus, advising information will be uniform and consistent across campus. Blackboard’s portfolio tool allows material to follow students rather than remain embedded in a particular Blackboard course. When a student completes Focus 2 Career in the college success course and posts the results in their BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site portfolio, the results will follow the student to a new advisor if the student changes their program of study. The same scenario holds true for the Advising Guide and the Academic Plan Assignment. When a student saves their Academic Plan Assignment to their Advising Guide in their BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site portfolio, the content will follow the student to a new advisor if a change of program is documented in Colleague. The new advisor may access the student’s portfolio materials immediately and begin the advising relationship with comprehensive student information. Aside from deploying BCCC PLAN tools, BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will provide current advisee lists, complete with contact information synchronized with the campus email system. Since Blackboard operates within our student portal and offers protection from third-party access, faculty advisors, who operate with an understanding of FERPA, may use all of Blackboard’s course delivery tools to communicate with advisees, including: email, announcements, calendar reminders, discussion boards, links to resources, posted documents, as well as synchronous and asynchronous audio and video discussions. BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will allow advisors to utilize Blackboard’s gradebook and journaling tools to track and document advising sessions.


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The efficacy of BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will be assessed by Process Delivery Outcome 4: Advisors will communicate information in a timely and efficient manner. This Process Delivery Outcome will be evaluated using direct and indirect measures that provide quantitative and qualitative data to determine the effectiveness of the BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites with regard to advisor communication. The NACADA Academic Advising Inventory will provide quantitative/direct evidence of advisors’ use of timely and efficient communication, while student focus groups will generate qualitative/indirect examples of how the Blackboard Advising Sites are used for timely and efficient communication. The Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will administer and analyze the NACADA Academic Advising Inventory; results will be shared with the QEP Director. BCCC PLAN Workgroup Leads will facilitate and analyze focus group data. Data will be used to improve BCCC PLAN Advising Sites and to share progress toward improving BCCC’s advising culture with the College’s stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees. During Spring 2019, all advisors will begin using a BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Site for advisee communication; the initial sites will not provide access to the Advising Guide or Focus 2 Career. Not only will this staggered deployment allow advisors to become familiar with ways to integrate Blackboard in their advising practice, but early roll-out of BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites ensures broad-based coverage for sharing QEP information with students. BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites are designed to display like courses on students’ Blackboard homepage, including notifications such as announcements and calendar reminders. BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites are integrated in BCCC PLAN’s marketing strategy to provide low-cost student publicity for the QEP via contact every time a student enters the Blackboard environment. Focus 2 Career and the Advising Guide will be added to BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites in Fall 2019. The initial template for the BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites to be deployed in Spring 2019 will include hidden links to out-of-sight BCCC webpages that will eventually contain the authentication access page for Focus 2 Career and the full-text of the Advising Guide. Building in these hidden links in the initial roll-out of BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites will allow us to reveal content as the project timeline advances without having to relaunch each advisor’s site with additional content. Additionally, this advance preparation allows for final revisions of these tools based on feedback received during the Planning Year. Table 12: BCCC PLAN Blackboard Advising Sites Timeline

Year Fall Spring Summer Planning Year 2018 2019 2019

Complete BCCC PLAN Advising Site Template Pilot BCCC PLAN Advising Site Template with one advisor Conduct professional development for advisors to learn uses for BCCC PLAN Advising Sites for communication

Advisors begin using BCCC PLAN Advising Sites for communication only Administer NACADA Academic Advising Inventory

Analyze all data; evaluate and improve BCCC PLAN Advising Sites as needed.


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Year One

2019 2020 2020 Begin using BCCC PLAN Advising Sites to house Focus 2 Career and Advising Guide Conduct Student Focus Group

Continue BCCC PLAN Advising Site Implementation Administer NACADA Academic Advising Inventory Analyze Student Focus Group data


Year Two

2020 2021 2021 Continue BCCC

PLAN Advising Site Implementation Conduct Student Focus Group



Year Three 2021 2022 2022

Continue BCCC PLAN Advising Site Implementation Conduct Student Focus Group



Year Four 2022 2023 2023 Continue BCCC




Year Five 2023 2024 2024 Continue BCCC



Analyze all data; evaluate and improve BCCC PLAN Advising Sites as needed. Contribute to five-year report

The organizational structure to support BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator follows in the next section.


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ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE

Administrative responsibility and oversight for BCCC PLAN rest with the Vice President of Academics. The QEP Director will lead the QEP Committee, coordinate the implementation and assessment of BCCC PLAN, and prepare the five-year report. The QEP Director reports to the Vice President of Academics, who also has administrative responsibility for BCCC’s Institutional Effectiveness under the new organizational structure established in June 2018 (Appendix J). As such, the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness also reports to the Vice President of Academics. The QEP Committee is a college standing committee that is responsible to Senior Staff and the President. QEP Committee membership is selective based on BCCC PLAN needs during each implementation year. QEP Committee assignments are made by Senior Staff, with input from the QEP Director to identify expertise needed each year. Faculty and staff job descriptions and contracts note that committee assignment and participation are expected and included in yearly personnel evaluations. BCCC PLAN components will be implemented by workgroups led by QEP Committee members who represent all academic divisions. Workgroups will be comprised of campus subject matter experts and other QEP Committee members. Workgroup Leads will secure administrative support to invite individuals outside the QEP Committee to participate in a workgroup. While workgroup participation by subject matter experts falls outside required committee assignments, we have found the campus community eager to participate. Workgroup leads directly report to academic Deans and ultimately to the Vice President of Academics (see Table 13). Table 13: Reporting Structure for BCCC PLAN Workgroup Leads

BCCC PLAN Component

Workgroup Lead BCCC Role Academic Division Dean/Director

Focus 2 Career James Casey Director, Learning Enhancement Center

Arts and Sciences

Advising Guide Dr. Millie House Faculty Allied Health Advising Training Carol Ingalls Faculty Business and Industrial

Technology Blackboard Advising Sites

Laurie Evans QEP Director/Faculty VP Academics/Arts and Sciences

Table 14 identifies individuals who have BCCC PLAN responsibilities by virtue of their BCCC position. The roles associated with BCCC PLAN align with the job description for each individual and do not represent significant additional time commitments. Table 14: BCCC PLAN Responsibilities Based on BCCC Role

Individual BCCC Position QEP Responsibilities Kate Purvis Blackboard Administrator Facilitate creation and

enrollment of Blackboard Advising Sites in Planning Year

Run system Bb Rubric Evaluation reports yearly

Whiting Toler System Administrator Facilitate and maintain Informer report to populate Blackboard Advising Sites.


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Dr. Jay Sullivan Vice President of Student Services

Assist Advisor Training related to Student Services functions

Ensure involvement of Student Services personnel in Advisor Training and collection of Change of Program Request data

Michele Mayo Director of Admissions Maintain log of Change of Program Requests

Kimberly Jackson Counselors Assist Advisor Training related to counseling Shelby Phillips

Melissa Francis Registrar Assist Advisor Training related to Registrar’s office

Crystal Johnson Coordinator of Financial Aid Assist Advisor Training related to financial aid

College Success Course (ACA) Instructors

College Success Course (ACA) Instructors

Develop common Academic Plan Assignment and Scoring Rubric

Evaluate student learning and collect rubric data for Academic Plan Assignment

Focus 2 Career instruction Advising Guide instruction

Highly Qualified Advisors Highly qualified Advisors Assist Advisor Training in train-the-trainer model

Fulltime Faculty Academic Advisors Evaluate student learning and collect data during advising sessions

Deliver consistent academic advising

Participate in advisor training Lisa Hill Dean of Arts and Science Implement required college

success courses Supervise advisors and college

success course instructors toward use of BCCC PLAN tools and rubric data collection

Kent Dickerson Director of Allied Health Ben Morris Dean of Business and Industrial

Technology

Erica Caracoglia Dean of Institutional Effectiveness

Work with QEP Director and Workgroup Leads toward QEP assessment

Configure, administer and analyze NACADA Academic Advising Inventory

Analyze North Carolina Community College Performance Measures data

Compile three-year completion data

Assist data analysis for five-year report

Attila Nemecz Coordinator of Marketing and Public Relations

Social media and web messaging

Resources to implement BCCC PLAN follow in the next section.


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RESOURCES/BUDGET

Throughout BCCC PLAN development, the QEP Committee paid close attention to implementation costs and the College’s capacity to sustain funding during the five-year implementation cycle and beyond. All ideas and decisions were guided by discussions of ways to configure existing technologies, resources and expertise to support BCCC PLAN goals and components. For example, instead of investing funds to design a new electronic platform to launch BCCC PLAN tools, this project configures our course management system to deliver BCCC PLAN tools and collect assessment data while simultaneously improving advisor communication and publicizing the project to students. To achieve this level of synchronicity and maximization of resources, the QEP team designed the project to integrate best practices and theory. As such, BCCC PLAN is an action research project designed to improve BCCC’s advising strategies using resources and expertise at hand to improve student success. Table 15 demonstrates the allocation of resources for BCCC PLAN. Line item justification and funding sources are identified following the table. Table 15: BCCC PLAN Budget

Planning Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 2017-18 2018-19 2019-20 2020-21 2021-22 2022-23 2023-24 TOTAL

Salary ($304,718) QEP Director Salary and Benefits .50 FTE 15,879 32,393 33,041 33,702 34,376 35,063 35,764 220,218

QEP Director Summer Contract 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 45,500 Adjunct instructor to cover reassigned time of QEP Director 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 6,500 39,000 Professional Development ($85,250) NACADA Membership (7 @ $75) 525 525 525 525 525 525 3,150 NACADA Annual Meetings (3 attendees) 5,250 5,250 5,250 5,250 5,250 5,250 31,500 NACADA Regional Meetings (4 attendees) 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 4,000 24,000

SACSCOC Meetings 10,000 2,000 2,000 14,000 Stipends for Faculty Advisors who present Advisor Training Sessions (7 @ $300) 2,100 2,100 2,100 2,100 2,100 2,100 12,600

Focus 2 Career ($9,600)

Focus 2 Career 1,600 1,600 1,600 1,600 1,600 1,600 9,600

Miscellaneous ($22,400)

Marketing/Publicity 4000 5,000 2,500 2,500 2,500 500 500 17,500

Supplies 1,900 1,000 500 500 500 500 4,900 TOTALS Planning Year 1 Year 2 Year 3 Year 4 Year 5 All

36,379 65,768 63,016 63,177 63,851 64,538 65,239 421,968


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Budget Logistics The QEP Director will be responsible for managing the BCCC PLAN budget. The College has created a QEP budget code with budget lines as noted in the budget table. The QEP Director will track and approve all budget expenses, seek administrative approval from the Vice President of Academics and forward approved expenses to the business office for payment. The Vice President of Administrative Services provides monthly budget balances to budget managers. Budget Justification Salary The QEP Director will be reassigned for .50 FTE to the Quality Enhancement Plan during BCCC PLAN implementation. The remaining .50 FTE for this individual will be comprised of teaching assignments in the Arts and Sciences Division. The budget includes funds to hire an adjunct instructor to cover classes affected by reassignment of the QEP Director. State funds designated in the institutional budget will be used salary and benefit expenses. Professional Development Since Advisor Training is a primary component of BCCC PLAN, a large portion of the budget is allocated to providing external professional development opportunities that will prepare highly trained advisors to share their expertise with other advisors as part of the train-the-trainer model of the Advisor Training component. Allocations include regional and national NACADA conferences to ensure that BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component is dynamic and informed by best practices and current experiential research, as well as funding for stipends for faculty advisors who prepare and present Advisor Training sessions based on external professional development opportunities. During Years Four and Five, the QEP Director will attend the SACSCOC Annual Meeting in preparation for developing the five-year report. As noted in the Developing the Topic section, four QEP team members attended the SACSCOC Institute on Quality Enhancement in Summer 2017, and the QEP Director was part of BCCC’s delegation to the Annual Meeting in December 2017. State funds designated in the QEP budget will be used to fund BCCC PLAN professional development activities. Focus 2 Career The yearly cost of Focus 2 Career represents all associated fees for unlimited use and access to data associated with our subscription. The cost includes pre/post-test components that support Student Learning Outcome 2: Students will evaluate their interests, personality, values and skills to select realistic educational and career goals. The Focus 2 Career Workgroup will customize the instrument to include BCCC artwork and programs of study, thereby eliminating start-up expenses. State funds designated in the QEP budget will be used to purchase Focus 2 Career. Miscellaneous Expenses Marketing/Publicity The budget includes funds to publicize and market BCCC PLAN for the duration of the project, with emphasis on launching the project in Fall 2018. BCCC will support marketing and publicity efforts for BCCC PLAN through a combination of operating budget (state funds) and grant funds. For example, marketing gratis items to create BCCC PLAN name recognition were purchased through the NC Problem Gambling grant, and the Spring 2017 BCCC PLAN kick-off celebration for students was funded in conjunction with our Beau-FITT grant.


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Supplies The QEP team recognizes that BCCC PLAN implementation will require funds for supplies and daily operating expenses, many of which will not be anticipated. Each budget year, including the Planning Year, includes funds for miscellaneous supply expenses. State funds designated in the QEP budget will be used for supply-related expenses. BCCC PLAN-Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator’s budget was developed with input and support of BCCC senior administration, including the College President. The budget aligns with the financial capability of Beaufort County Community College with minimal reliance on new or external funds. Should state or grant funds be reduced, BCCC will use self-supporting funds it holds in reserve to ensure implementation of the Quality Enhancement Plan throughout the implementation period. The next section contains the Assessment Plan for BCCC PLAN.


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ASSESSMENT PLAN

BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator includes a detailed plan to measure formative effectiveness of BCCC PLAN components based on four Student Learning Outcomes and four Process Delivery Outcomes, as well as two measures of summative evaluation of student success. As noted in the Literature Review, significant evidence exists to not only associate, but directly link, academic advising to student success. As such, BCCC PLAN’s summative evaluation will be based on student success indices related to progression and completion. As such, the BCCC PLAN is directly associated with institutional data that indicated the need for an advising-based Quality Enhancement Plan, the College Mission and Strategic Plan. Baselines of Institutional Data Related to Student Success (Summative) As noted previously in the Identification of the Topic section, the NC Community College System compiles annual performance measures of student success for all 58 system schools. Beaufort County Community College’s 2017 Performance Measures for Student Success (Appendix K) provide a baseline for summative assessment of BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator related to first year progression. Additionally, local institutional data regarding three-year completion rates for each academic division provide baseline data for overall student success at the College. Levels of Expectation for Student Success Improvement Over the course of BCCC PLAN—Personalized Learning and Advising Navigator implementation, we anticipate student success indices for first-year progression and three-year curriculum completion rates to show improvement as noted in Table 16. Table 16: Baselines and Expected Impacts on Student Success

Instrument Measure Baseline

Year 1 FA2019 SP2020





NC Community College System 2017 Performance Measures

First Year Progression

2015 cohort (66.9%)

Will begin measurement in Year 2

Percentage of first-time fall curriculum students attempting at least 12 credit hours who successfully complete at least 12 hours within their first academic year (fall, spring, summer) will increase by 2 percentage points from baseline year.





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Responsibility and Timeframe for Summative Data Analysis Primary responsibility for summative data analysis rests with the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, who reports to the Vice President of Academics. At the end of Year Two (Spring 2021), the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will analyze the institution’s most recent North Carolina Community College System’s Performance Measures first year progression data with regard to baseline data. At the end of Year Three, the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will compile and analyze three-year completion rates for the largest programs, by division, with regard to baseline data. In addition to annual dissemination of these results to Senior Staff and the Board of Trustees, this data will be shared with the QEP Director to provide insight to ongoing progression toward improving student success during QEP implementation.

The QEP Director and QEP Workgroup Leads will correlate the aforementioned summative institutional student success data with formative outcome results for Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes. Data will be used to improve BCCC PLAN and to share progress toward improving BCCC’s advising culture and connecting advising to student success with the College’s stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees.

Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes (Formative Assessment) Formative assessment of Student Learning Outcomes and effectiveness of Process Delivery Outcomes will be used to evaluate BCCC PLAN components to promote continuous improvement throughout QEP implementation. The Assessment Plan strategically integrates quantitative and qualitative data, as well as indirect and direct measures. Since most BCCC PLAN formative assessment instruments are new to the College, baselines will be established during the planning year or first year of implementation. Evaluation of Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes will be assessed by multiple measures. For example, Student Learning Outcome 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values, and skills will be assessed by a pre/post test to measure changes in students’ ability to establish goals related to their interests, personality, values, and skills; the Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric to document the congruence between a student’s career/educational goals and their interests, personality, values, and skills; as well as an Advising Session Log which tracks program of study with relation to career/educational goals.

Responsibility for Formative Assessment Data Collection and Analysis Responsibility for assembly and analysis of outcome data ultimately rests with the QEP Director; however, the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will support the QEP Director and QEP Committee Workgroup Leads during each assessment cycle. The QEP Director and the Dean of

BCCC Institutional Data

Three-year Curriculum Completion Rates

Cohort beginning. 2015

Will begin measurement in Year 3.

Will begin measurement in Year 3.

Percentage of students in Fall 2018 cohort completing curriculum program within three years will increase by 5 percentage points from baseline year.



AH/ PS

33.3%

A/S 12.6%

BIT 6.3%


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Institutional Effectiveness report to the Vice President of Academics. The QEP Director leads the QEP Committee, a standing committee that reports to Senior Staff. The Vice President of Academics and the QEP Director provide regular updates to the President and the Board of Trustees regarding the progress and effectiveness of BCCC PLAN.

Instruments to Evaluate Formative Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes Evaluation of Student Learning Outcomes and Process Delivery Outcomes will employ eight instruments to collect qualitative and quantitative data from indirect and direct measures (see Table 17). All Student Learning Outcomes will be assessed by direct measures, which provide quantitative data with baseline comparisons.

Table 17: BCCC PLAN Assessment Instruments and Data Collection Responsibility

Instrument Q

uant

itativ

e

Qua

litat

ive

Dire

ct

Indi

rect

SLO

s m

easu

red

PDO

s m

easu

red

Tim

efra

me

Res

p. fo

r da

ta

colle

ctio

n

Advising Session Log X X

SLO 1 SLO 2 SLO 3

Aggregate Spring Advisors

Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric X X

SLO 3 SLO 4

Aggregate Spring

College Success Course Instructors

Focus 2 Career Pre/Post Test X X SLO 3 Aggregate Spring

College Success Course Instructors

NACADA Academic Advising Inventory X X SLO 1

PDO 2 PDO 3 PDO 4 Spring

Dean of Institutional Effectiveness

Enrollment in College-level English Course within first two semesters of BCCC Enrollment X X SLO 4 Spring

Dean of Institutional Effectiveness

Advisor Focus Group X X SLO 1 SLO 2 Fall

BCCC PLAN Workgroup Leads

Advisor Training Session Exit Survey X X X X

PDO 1 PDO 2 PDO 3

Aggregate Spring

Advisor Training Workgroup Lead

Student Focus Group X X

PDO 1 PDO 2 PDO 3 PDO 4 Fall

BCCC PLAN Workgroup Leads

Advising Session Log Advisors will maintain an Advising Session Log (Appendix I) to document all student advising meetings. Given the strong association between student advising meetings and student success (Klepfer & Hull, 2012; Swecker et al., 2013), the log will track “across the desk” advising sessions, including face-to-face and virtual video sessions. While advisors recognize the importance of responsiveness to telephone and email contacts, we seek to build advising


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relationships as suggested in the literature. As such, telephone and email contacts will not be tracked. The log will record each visit, purpose of the visit, whether the student came to a registration-related advising session prepared with a tentative course schedule, the student’s program of study and stated career/educational goal. This information will provide evidence of student learning related to practicing responsibility (SLOs 1 and 2) and selecting a program of study aligned with future goals (SLO 3). Since advising sessions are not a required element in the current advising strategy, a documented increase in advising session attendance can be linked to learning strategies related to BCCC PLAN’s student responsibility SLOs.

Advising Sessions Log data will be aggregated and analyzed by Workgroup Leads and the QEP Director. Results will be used to improve the instruction for the Advising Guide and Focus 2 Career and shared with College constituents.

Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric The Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric (Appendix H) will be used to measure SLO 3 with regard to students’ ability to establish career/educational goals based on their interests, personality, values, and skills and SLO 4 measuring students’ ability to create an academic plan that meets program of study requirements. This analytic rubric addresses multiple criteria related to the Academic Plan Assignment using four levels of performance associated with point values: unattempted (0), needs improvement (1), satisfactory (2) and exemplary (3). The Academic Plan Assignment Scoring Rubric will be located in the Blackboard site associated with each college success course, and college success course instructors will use the rubric to evaluate student learning. Every Spring, the Blackboard Administrator will launch a system Rubric Evaluation Report to aggregate all Academic Plan Assignment rubric scores entered during the previous implementation year. The Blackboard Rubric Evaluation Report includes breakdowns for each rubric item, including proficiency, mean, mode and standard deviation.

This approach to collecting and aggregating rubric data maximizes our institutional investment in Blackboard technology and reduces the time and resources needed to design, implement and administer additional assessment instruments. More importantly, rubric-based evaluation will provide quantitative/direct evidence to help us improve student success. Since every BCCC class maintains a required Blackboard site, all instructors know how to use the platform.

The Rubric Evaluation Reports will be analyzed by Advising Guide Workgroup Lead and shared with the QEP Committee for possible revisions to BCCC PLAN.

Focus 2 Career Pre/Post Test Focus 2 Career’s Planning Readiness Inventory will be used to gather pre/post test evidence of students’ ability to establish educational and career goals aligned with their interests, personality, values and skills (SLO 3). All Focus 2 Career inventories have been nationally normed with a low rate of variance. Users may complete the Planning Readiness Inventory multiple times, so the instrument is appropriate for pre/post-test assessment of student learning. College success course instructors will administer the pre-test in week 2 of the semester, prior to instruction related to aligning career interest and skills with selecting a program of study, and the post-test will be administered in week 16. The Focus 2 Career Workgroup Lead will capture student performance data immediately following administration of the pre-test and again immediately following the post-test using Focus 2 Career’s administrative.

Every Spring, the Focus 2 Career Workgroup Lead will aggregate academic year results and analyze to determine growth in student learning between weeks 2 and 16. Results will be shared with the QEP Committee for possible BCCC PLAN revisions and with academic Deans and college success course instructors for possible Focus 2 Career instructional changes.


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NACADA Academic Advising Inventory The NACADA Academic Advising Inventory (Winston & Sandor, 1984) is an open-source nationally-normed instrument provided free of charge to NACADA members (Appendix L). The QEP team selected this instrument for its ability to generate quantitative/direct evidence of the effectiveness of BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component, especially with regard to practices that foster student responsibility through collaborative advising and advisors’ relational advising skills.

In accordance with NACADA’s licensing agreement, we will use Parts I, II and customized versions of Parts III and IV in the evaluation of the Process Delivery Outcomes 2, 3 and 4 and Student Learning Outcome 1. Part 1 focuses on the advising relationship to determine whether advisors “tell advisees” what they should do, or if advisors provide options and help students take responsibility for decision-making. Part 1 will provide evidence toward Process Delivery Outcome 2, which aims for advisors to use collaborative advising strategies, and Process Delivery Outcome 3, which measures advisors’ relational skills. Part 2 will provide further evidence of advisors’ relational skills (Process Delivery Outcome 3) by collecting evidence of how often activities occur in the advising relationship. Parts III and IV provide the latitude to customize items to evaluate advisors’ communication strategies (PDO4) and student behavior with regard to attending advising sessions (SLO1).

During the Planning Year, the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will configure NACADA’s Academic Advising Inventory for online delivery. NACADA provides an Excel electronic version of the instrument; however, the tool is not optimized for multi-system delivery or remote data collection. The Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will administer the inventory prior to BCCC PLAN implementation to establish baselines. Thereafter, the inventory will be administered every spring to students who matriculated at the College during BCCC PLAN implementation. The Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will provide data analysis to the QEP Committee. Data will be used to improve BCCC PLAN’s Advisor Training component and instruction related to student responsibility. Results will be shared with the College’s stakeholders, including students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees, to demonstrate progress toward improving BCCC’s advising culture.

Enrollment in College-level English Course Institutional data reflecting the percentage of eligible students who enroll in a college-level English course within two semesters of enrollment at BCCC will be used to measure change in student behavior with regard to SLO 4, which focuses on students’ ability to create a coherent Academic Plan. To move the needle on student success, the College must teach students the value of creating an academic plan that scaffolds required classes in a coherent order that allows for timely program completion. As noted previously in the Identification of the Topic section, students procrastinate taking a college-level English course. Of BCCC’s 2015 cohort of 305 first-time Associate Degree seeking and transfer pathway students, only 157, or 51.5%, enrolled in a college-level English course within two years.

The Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will analyze institutional data to establish a baseline of the percentage of eligible students who enrolled in a college-level English course during their first or second semester at BCCC during the 2018-2019 academic year. Thereafter, every Spring during BCCC PLAN implementation, the Dean of Institutional Effectiveness will gather and analyze college-level English course enrollment data for first and second semester students who are eligible to take these courses. Our current developmental education model allows for the completion of developmental coursework within two semesters; however, a statewide co-requisite model will be implemented in 2020.Therefore, the only students who will be ineligible to take a college-level English course are those who require basic skills remediation prior to


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taking the first-year English course. Data will be shared with the QEP Committee and used to improve the Advising Guide and the common Academic Plan assignment. Further, all results will be shared with College constituents to document BCCC PLAN’s impact on student success.

Student and Advisor Focus Groups Qualitative evidence is valuable to assessing advising, especially if the evidence moves beyond satisfaction ratings. The QEP team will facilitate two focus groups every Fall: one for students and one for advisors. Participants for Student Focus Group will be identified through a volunteer process linked to an incentive, such as an item from the BCCC campus store, while participants for the Advisor Focus Group will be randomly selected. Data from Advisor Focus Groups will provide qualitative/indirect measures for Student Learning Outcomes 1 and 2 regarding student responsibility for attending advising sessions and preparing a tentative course schedule prior to advising-related advising sessions. Student Focus Group data will provide qualitative/indirect measures for all Process Delivery Outcomes, which are associated with the Advisor Training and Blackboard Advising Site components of BCCC PLAN. QEP Workgroup Leaders will analyze results and share with the QEP Committee for possible BCCC PLAN revisions. Data will also be shared with students, faculty, staff, administration and the Board of Trustees to demonstrate our progress toward improving advising consistency in all academic programs.

Advisor Training Exit Surveys Advisor Training participants will complete exit surveys after Advisor Training sessions. Results will provide data to document whether sessions are effective in preparing advisors to provide accurate informational, conceptual, and relational knowledge to advisees (PDOs 1, 2 and 3). The Advisor Training Workgroup Lead will gather, aggregate and analyze exit survey data. Data will be used to improve BCCC PLAN Advisor Training component and to share progress toward improving BCCC’s Advisor Training with the College’s stakeholders.

Mapping of Student Learning Outcomes Student Learning Outcomes are mapped to indicate when, where and through what experiences desired outcomes will be achieved. Student Learning Outcomes are also mapped to specific BCCC PLAN components (see Tables 18-21). While Student Learning Outcomes can be associated with more than one BCCC PLAN component, this Assessment Plan maps each Student Learning Outcome to only one component; the assessment structure is comprehensive enough to allow re-designation at the end of each year if additional validation is needed.

Table 18: Assessment of Student Learning Outcome 1

SLO 1: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions.Component: Advising Guide BCCC PLAN Goal 2: Student Responsibility

Opportunities for Student Learning

Outcome Measurement Data Instruments Timeframe Level of Expected Performance

AdvisingSessionsCollege successclassesAdvising GuideBb Advising SitesOrientation

Number of academic advising sessions held per academic year

Advising Session Log completed by the advisor

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline number of academic advising sessions per academic year.

Year 1 SP 2020

Number of academic advising sessions held per year will increase by 4 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 2SP 2021


Year 3SP 2022


Year 4SP 2023


Year 5SP 2024

Number of academic advising sessions held per year will match previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide, Advisor Training, College success course instruction and the Advising Session Log.Responsibility: QEP Director, Advisors, Advising Guide Workgroup Lead

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions

Responses to open-ended discussion questions in a Faculty Focus Group

Year 1FA 2019

Establish baseline of advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions.

Year 2FA 2020

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from baseline.

Year 3 FA 2021

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Year 4 FA 2022


Year 5 FA 2023


Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide, Advisor Training and Advisor Focus Group questions.

Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads; QEP Director

BEAU

FORT C

OU

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SLO 1: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by attending advising sessions.Component: Advising Guide BCCC PLAN Goal 2: Student Responsibility



Mean number of advising sessions students report they attended in a specified academic year

NACADA Academic Advising Inventory, Part IV

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline mean number of advising sessions student report they attended in the 2018-2019 academic year.

Year 1 SP 2020

Mean number of advising sessions students report they attended inthe 2019-2020 academic year will increase by 2 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 2SP 2021


Year 3SP 2022


Year 4SP 2023


Year 5SP 2024


Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide, Advisor Training and College success course instruction related to student responsibility.Responsibility: QEP Director, Dean of Institutional Effectiveness


SLO 2: Students will practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions.

Component: Advising Guide BCCC PLAN Goal 2: Student ResponsibilityOpportunities for Student Learning


AdvisingSessionsCollege successclassesAdvising GuideBb Advising SitesOrientation

Percentage of advisees seeking registration-related advising who practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to the advising session

Advising Session Log completed by the advisor

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of percentage of advisees seeking registration-related advising who practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to the advising session.

Year 1 SP 2020

Percentage of advisees seeking registration-related advising who practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to the advising session will increase by 4 percentage points from the baseline.

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Year 2SP 2021


Year 3SP 2022


Year 4SP 2023


Year 5SP 2024

Percentage of advisees seeking registration-related advising who practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to the advising session will match previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide, Advisor Training, College success course instruction and the Advising Session Log. Responsibility: QEP Director, Blackboard Administrator, Advisors, Advising Guide Workgroup Lead

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions

Responses to open-ended discussion questions in an Advisor Focus Group

Year 1 FA 2019

Establish baseline of advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions.

Year 2 FA 2020

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from baseline.

Year 3 FA 2021

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Year 4 FA 2022

Advisor observations of how advisees practice responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

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Year 5 FA 2023

Advisor observations of how advisees demonstrate responsibility in the advising relationship by preparing a tentative course schedule prior to registration-related advising sessions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide, Advisor Training and Advisor Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director


SLO 3: Students will establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skillsComponent: Focus 2 Career BCCC PLAN Goal 1: Advising Culture & Goal 2: Student Responsibility



College successcourseAdvising sessionsBb Advising sitesOrientation

Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills

Focus 2 Planning Readiness Pre-test/Post-test administered in college success course classes

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline measure of percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores.

Year 1Aggregate SP 2020

Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores will increase 1 percentage point from baseline.

Year 2AggregateSP 2021

Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores will increase 2 percentage points from baseline.


Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores will increase 3 percentage points from baseline.


Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores will increase 4 percentages points from baseline.

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Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who demonstrate growth in their ability to establish career/educational goals that are congruent with their interests, personality, values and skills based on pre-test and post-test scores will match previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve college success course instruction regarding Focus 2 Career, Advisor Training and configuration of Focus 2 Career institutional content.Responsibility: College success course instructors, QEP Focus 2 Career Workgroup Lead, QEP Director

Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who establish educational/career goals based on their interests, personality, values, and skills as demonstrated by scoring “satisfactory” or “exemplary” on Item 1 of the Scoring Rubric for the Academic PLAN Assignment

Scoring Rubric for the Academic PLAN Assignmentcompleted by the college success course Instructor

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who establish educational/career goals based on their interests, personality, values, and skills as demonstrated by scoring “satisfactory” or “exemplary” on Item 1 of the Scoring Rubric for the Academic PLAN Assignment.

Year 1 AggregateSP 2020

Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who establish educational/career goals based on their interests, personality, values, and skills as demonstrated by scoring “satisfactory” or “exemplary” on Item 1 of the Scoring Rubric for the Academic PLAN Assignment will increase by 1 percentage point from the baseline.


Percentage of students enrolled in a college success course who establish educational/career goals based on their interests, personality, values, and skills as demonstrated by scoring “satisfactory” or “exemplary” on Item 1 of the Scoring Rubric for the Academic PLAN Assignment will increase by 2 percentage points from the baseline.





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Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training, college success course instructor training regarding Focus 2 Career and Advisor Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director

Percentage of advisees who attend an advising session who select a program of study aligned with their career goal

Advising Session Logmaintained by the advisor

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of the percentage advisees who attend an advising session who select a program of study aligned with their career goal.


Percentage advisees who attend an advising session who select a program of study aligned with their career goal will increase by 1 percentage point from the baseline.


Percentage of advisees who attend an advising session who select a program of study aligned with their career goal will increase by 2 percentage points from the baseline.






Percentage of advisees who attend an advising session who select a program of study aligned with their career goal will match previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and college success course instructor training with regard to the Advising Guide and Focus 2 Career..Responsibility: Workgroup Leads, QEP Director

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SLO 4: Students will develop a coherent academic plan aligned with their educational/career goals that meets program requirements.Component: Advising Guide BCCC PLAN Goal 1: Advising Culture & Goal 2: Student Responsibility



College success course classes, Bb Advising Sites, Advising Sessions

Percentage of college success course students who earn a grade of A or B on the college success course Academic Plan Assignment

Scoring Rubric for the Academic Plan Assignmentcompleted by the college success course Instructor

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of percentage of college success course students who earn a grade of A or B on the college success course Academic Plan Assignment.


Percentage of college success course students who earn a grade of A or B on the Academic Plan Assignment will increase by 2percentage points from the baseline.


Percentage of college success course students who e earn a grade of A or B on the Academic Plan Assignment will increase by 4percentage points from the baseline.






Percentage of college success course students who earn a grade of A or B on the Academic Plan Assignment will match previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve the college success course Academic Plan Assignment and Scoring Rubric, Advisor Training, college success course instructor training and navigation of Advising Blackboard Sites.Responsibility: Advising Guide Workgroup Leader, college success course instructors, Blackboard Administrator, QEP Director

Percentage of eligible students who enroll in a college-level English course within first or second semester of BCCC enrollment

Institutional data Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of percentage eligible students who enroll in a college-level English course within first or second semester of BCCC enrollment.

Year 1 SP 2020

Percentage of eligible students who enroll in a college-level English course within first or second semester of BCCC enrollment willincrease by 2 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 2 SP 2021

Percentage of eligible students who enroll in a college-level English course within first or second semester of BCCC enrollment will increase by 4 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 3 SP 2022


Year 4 SP 2023


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SLO 4: Students will develop a coherent academic plan aligned with their educational/career goals that meets program requirements.Component: Advising Guide BCCC PLAN Goal 1: Advising Culture & Goal 2: Student Responsibility



Year 5 SP 2024


Implications: Results will be used to improve the Advising Guide and the Academic Plan Assignment.

Responsibility: Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, QEP Director


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Mapping of Process Delivery Outcomes BCCC PLAN’s Process Delivery Outcomes are mapped to indicate how desired outcomes will be achieved and when we will demonstrate that desired outcomes have been achieved (see Tables 22-25). All Process Delivery Outcomes are mapped to BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Improve advising consistency in all academic programs. Advisor training is critical to improving advising consistency; therefore, three Process Delivery Outcomes address the Advisor Training Component:

PDO 1: Advisors will provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources.

PDO 2: Advisors will employ collaborative advising strategies to guide students to make responsible academic decisions.

PDO 3: Advisors will demonstrate relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship.

Additionally, Process Delivery Outcome 4: Advisors will communicate information in a timely and efficient manner, addresses the effectiveness of the Blackboard Advising Site component of the QEP.

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Table 22: Assessment of Process Delivery Outcome 1

PDO 1: Advisors will provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resourcesComponent: Advisor Training BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency

Opportunities to Demonstrate Outcome Outcome Measurement Data

Instrument Timeframe Expected Level of Performance

Advising sessionscollege success courseinstructionCommunication withAdviseesAdvising Bb sites

Percentage of advisors responding that advising training sessions improved their ability to provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources

Responses to items on Training Post-Session Exit Surveys

Year 0SP 2019

75% of attendees will respond that Advisor Training Sessions improved their ability to provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources.

Year 1 Aggregate SP 2020










Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and content of Training Post-Session Exit Surveys.Responsibility: QEP Advisor Training Workgroup Lead; QEP Director

Student reports of examples regarding the accuracy of information provided by their advisor with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources

Responses to open-ended questions in a Student Focus Group

Year 1 FA 2019

Establish baseline of student reports of examples regarding the accuracy of information provided by their advisor with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources.

Year 2 FA 2020

Student reports of examples regarding the accuracy of information provided by their advisor with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources will increase in depth and scope from baseline.

Year 3 FA 2021

Student reports of examples regarding the accuracy of information provided by their advisor with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resources will increase in depth and scope from previous year.

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PDO 1: Advisors will provide accurate informational knowledge with regard to academic policies, procedures and student support resourcesComponent: Advisor Training BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency

Opportunities to Demonstrate Outcome Outcome Measurement Data

Instrument Timeframe Expected Level of Performance

Year 4 FA 2022


Year 5 FA 2023


Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Advising Blackboard Sites.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director


PDO 2: Advisors will employ collaborative advising strategies to guide students to make responsible academic decisions.Component: Advisor Training BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency

Opportunities to Demonstrate Outcome

Outcome Measurement Data Instrument

Timeframe Expected Level of Performance

Advising sessionscollege success courseinstructionCommunication withAdviseesAdvising Bb sites

Student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to makeresponsible academic decisions

Responses to open-ended questions in aStudent Focus Group

Year 1 FA 2020

Establish baseline student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions.

Year 2 FA2021

Student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to makeresponsible academic decisions will increase in scope and variety from baseline.

Year 3 FA2022

Student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to makeresponsible academic decisions will increase in scope and variety from the previous year.

Year 4 FA 2023

Student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to makeresponsible academic decisions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Year 5 FA 2024

Student reports of examples of how their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to makeresponsible academic decisions will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Student Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director

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Percentage of students responding that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academicdecisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising

NACADA Academic Advising Inventory (items related to collaborative advising practices)

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of the percentage of students responding that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising.

Year 1 SP 2020

Percentage of students responding that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising will increase by 5 percentage points from baseline.

Year 2 SP 2021

Percentage of students responding that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising will increase by 7 percentage points from baseline.

Year 3 SP 2022

Percentage of students responding that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising will increase by 10 percentage pointsfrom baseline.

Year 4 SP 2023

Percentage of students responding that their advisor employscollaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising will increase by 15 percentage pointsfrom baseline.

Year 5 SP 2024

100% of students will respond that their advisor employs collaborative advising strategies to guide them to make responsible academic decisions as demonstrated by the average of inventory responses related to items related to collaborative advising.

Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training.Responsibility: Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, Advisor Training Workgroup Lead, QEP Director

Percentage of advisors responding that advising training sessions improved their

Responses to items on Training Post-

Year 0SP 2019

75% of attendees will respond that Advisor Training Sessions improved their ability to employ collaborative advising strategiesto guide students to make responsible advising decisions.

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LOREM IPSUM





ability to employ collaborative advising strategies to guide students to make responsible advising decisions

Session Exit Surveys









Year 5 AggregateSP2024


Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Advisor Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director


PDO 3: Advisors will demonstrate relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship.Component: Advisor Training BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency


Outcome MeasurementData

InstrumentTimeframe Expected Level of Performance

Advising sessionsCollege success courseinstructionCommunication withAdviseesAdvising Bb sites

Percentage of students responding that their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to relational advising practices

NACADA Advising Instrument (items regarding relational advising practices)

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline percentage of students responding that their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to relational advising practices.

Year 1 SP 2020

Percentage of students responding that their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to relational advising practices will increase by 5 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 2 SP 2021


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Year 3 SP 2022


Year 4 SP 2023


Year 5 SP 2024

100% of students will respond that their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to relational advising practices.

Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training.Responsibility: Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, Advisor Training Workgroup Lead, QEP Director

Student reports of examples of how their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills related to the advising relationship


Year 1 FA 2019

Establish baseline of student reports of examples of how their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship.

Year 2 FA 2020

Student reports of examples of how their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship will increase in scope and variety from baseline.

Year 3 FA 2021

Student reports of examples of how their advisor demonstrates relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship will increase in scope and variety from previous year.

Year 4 FA 2022


Year 5 FA 2023


Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Student Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP DirectorPercentage of advisors responding that advising training sessions improved their

Responses to items on Training Post-

Year 0SP 2019

75% of attendees will respond that Advisor Training Sessions improved their ability to use relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship.

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ability to use relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship

Session Exit Surveys








75% of attendees will respond that Advisor Training Sessions improved their ability to use relational knowledge and skills in the advising relationship



Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Advisor Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director


PDO 4: Advisors will communicate information in a timely and efficient manner.Component: Blackboard Advising Sites BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency

Opportunities to DemonstrateOutcome

Outcome Measurement Data Instrument Timeframe Expected Level of Performance

Bb AnnouncementsBb Generated EmailsBb Links

Percentage of students responding that their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to communication

NACADA Advising Survey (items regarding timely and efficient communication)

Year 0SP 2019

Establish baseline of the percentage of students responding that their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to communication.

Year 1 SP 2020

Percentage of students responding that their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to communication will increase from by 5 percentage points from the baseline.

Year 2 SP 2021


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PDO 4: Advisors will communicate information in a timely and efficient manner.Component: Blackboard Advising Sites BCCC PLAN Goal 3: Advising Consistency

Opportunities to DemonstrateOutcome

Outcome Measurement Data Instrument Timeframe Expected Level of Performance

Year 3 SP 2022


Year 4 SP 2023


Year 5 SP 2024

100% students will respond that their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner as demonstrated by an average of responses to inventory items related to communication.

Implications: Results will be used to improve Blackboard Advising Sites and Advisor Training.Responsibility: Dean of Institutional Effectiveness, QEP Director

Student reports of examples of how their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner


Year 1 FA 2019

Establish baseline of student reports of examples of how their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner

Year 2 FA 2020

Student reports of examples of how their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner will increase in scope and depth from baseline.

Year 3 FA 2021

Student reports of examples of how their advisor communicates information in a timely and efficient manner will increase in scope and depth from previous year.

Year 4 FA 2022


Year 5 FA 2023


Implications: Results will be used to improve Advisor Training and Student Focus Group questions.Responsibility: QEP Workgroup Leads, QEP Director


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These summative and formative assessments will provide data that illustrate the impact of BCCC Plan on student success, as well as ongoing progress toward student learning with regard to student responsibility and assessment of their interests, personality, values and skills. Further, data will evaluate four Process Delivery Outcomes that address Advisor Training and Blackboard Advising Sites. In sum, the Assessment Plan will assist BCCC to fulfill our Mission and Strategic Plan goals related to student success.


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APPENDICES

Appendix A Data Provided to Faculty and Staff during Focus Groups for Topic Selection (February, 2016)


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Appendix A, continued


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Appendix B Topic Selection Ballot and Results (March, 2016)

QEP Topic Selection Recommendation Ballot

Directions: Rank each topic idea from 1-6. (1 equals greatest impact on student learning/success; 6 equals least impact on student learning/success).

Advising

Student Accountability

Registration

Student Career Development

Student Computer Literacy

Campus Communication

Note: Results for the QEP Focus Group Ballot were scored on a scale of 1-6 where the lowest score (1) represents the topic likely to have the greatest impact on student learning.

0

50

100

150

200

250

300

350

400

450

500

Advising (289) Registration (333) ComputerLiteracy (361)

StudentAccountability

(377)

CampusCommunication

(439)

CareerDevelopment

(448)

QEP Focus Group Ballot Results

QEP Focus Group Ballot Results


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Appendix C Student Survey for Topic Selection (April, 2016)


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Appendix D Data from Faculty Listening Sessions to Narrow the Topic (February, 2017) What does advising mean? Arts/Sciences Business/Industrial

Technology Allied Health Public Service

To plan help students Conversations with students regarding

get to know students customer service

A suggested career get to know students' goals A career path get to know students' plans should include career planning Help them define and reach their goals

give professional advice (beyond POS/Reg)

prepare students for real-life prepare students for work

place

understanding the student's perspective

get to know students' commitments

Mentoring role relationship/mentoring comprehensive relationships with students

Developing a connection or trusted relationships

Be accessible Help students become independent

student-driven (creates student accountability)

Help students understand what they have signed up for.

Assist in Registration help students understand campus technology

good, detailed flowsheet-type system to guide students through program

Institutional knowledge as well as “next-step” knowledge

help students navigate campus parking, text alert system, BB, textbooks, 1st day of class, etc.

flows seamlessly from admission and orientation

Instructors as the information pipeline

What do we do at BCCC to meet the ideal definition of advising? Arts/Sciences Business/Industrial


A welcoming environment – smile, open door

Faculty who care Meeting one-on-one with students

small college

Peek students interest by reaching out to the students outside of class

good student/faculty interaction outside of class

small community


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Faculty/advisors go extra mile to reach out to students via email, class, Bb, calling

faculty is tenacious willing/interested faculty

Some advisors take time to learn students' interests, it may help determine a career path

connects students with advisors who teach in the student's major (OMA)

Advisors in AHPS advise students in their discipline

Creating an individualized plan

Advisors have frank conversations with students to help them to have “realistic expectations”

Flexible – making time for students

mentor new advisors Mentor new advisors some "super users" translated: very strong advisors

Self-service is a good tool Registration is now electronic--will allow time for focused advising

Self-Service is open 24 hrs for students to plan online

BIT has an advising notebook (is it being used in Student Services?)

Criminal Justice Advising Syllabus

BCCC makes registration a priority in the instructional schedule

What do we do at BCCC that hinders the ideal definition of advising? Arts/Sciences Business/Industrial


Open Registration creates havoc for advisors, scheduling and does not encourage student accountability

Open Registration creates procrastination, pushes weaker students to summer advising, perpetuated unaccountability in students

Open Registration difficult to provide focused advising, encourages students to procrastinate

Open Registration: Does this foster dependence or independence?

students do not take responsibility/ownership for their education

Need more advisor training (new and existing faculty)

faculty advisors need more training


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All advisors may not know what services are available on campus (TRIO, LEC, Counseling)

Curriculum advisors are not equipped to advise developmental students. These students would be best served by counselors.

Time Management/Faculty are pulled in too many directions

Faculty cannot be responsible for everything. Paperwork needs to be completed by the registrar/admission offices.

faculty are pulled in MANY directions: clinical, lecture, committees…advising suffers

No clear definition of the role of an advisor

We confuse "advising" with paperwork.

Role conflict – advisor vs. instructor – One may affect the other Advisors don’t always show students that they care about them. Need to stop thinking of registration and advising as one and the same Need a more holistic advising model that looks at more than course selection and registration

Summer Advising is not always accurate.

Summer advising center hinders connection between students and their assigned advisor.

Summer advising center advisors do not know "best practices" for each discipline (e.g., BIT students need to take at least one BIT class in the first semester to connect with faculty and stay motivated through foundation courses)

need to add career exploration to ACA/post admission conversation

need career planning right after admissions. Perhaps with counselors or online vocational assessment. This needs to be in place before first advising session.

no career planning tools

poor communication between all offices (student services to academics)

Web changes are not communicated (makes it even harder to locate materials)

Poor communication between admissions, financial aid, placement testing office, and registrar’s office: systems, dates, forms, processes change frequently (no consistency)

Students don’t necessarily come on registration day even though we have a day set aside for it

redundancies paper/electronic copies

Students are not sending course plans to faculty for approval


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The technology may not always work

Website: form names are not clear

not enough semesters are visible in WebAdvisor for planning (6 ideal)

lack of faculty input regarding WebAdvisor

Advisee lists are not current. Advisors spend too much time trying to reach out to students who have not been purged from the system.

website is not intuitive (difficult to locate materials) Was the site tested with students and faculty before launch?


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Appendix E Student Topic Narrowing Focus Group Data (February, 2017)

Video Recording of session: https://vimeo.com/205110873 password: advising

Definition:

• first point of contact after enrollment • keeping student on track to graduate • planning / scheduling • answering questions with authority / knowledge • providing guidance on program / career • ensuring success • collaboration • “becoming close” / fostering personal relationship

Positive:

• planning schedule well before registration opens • willingness to help students who are not designated advisees • self‐service helps with advisor availability issues • made time for advising / advisor flexibility • knowledge of student’s personal history • creation of timeline / 2‐year plan • matching students to instructors based on history and abilities • knowledge of learning styles • group program advising • additional advice/guidance from other campus support services

Negative:

• commuter student—advisor availability difficulties • with self‐service, advising is purely email exchange • assigned advisor has no personal knowledge of student • advising center staff has little program knowledge • self‐service problems (advisor needed to override) • advisor unavailable / inconvenient office hours • self‐service glitch allowed students to register prematurely

• feeling hurried and pressured during advising Suggestions for Future:

• personality tests / career interest inventories (career center / ACA course) • ACA requirement in first year • multiple, flexible orientation sessions • required meetings with advisor in addition to self‐service • more advisor availability • optional online advising sessions • experienced peer advising (mentoring/coaching) within program • additional/improved training for self‐service

https://vimeo.com/205110873


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Appendix F Planning Committee Faculty/Staff Focus Group Results (Spring, 2015)

Question Responses Put yourself in the shoes of a student coming to college for the first time. What common challenges do you feel the student will face? What role as faculty and/or staff play in addressing the issue and helping the student overcome those challenges.

Even traditional students are nontraditional Getting the run around Travelling from building to building during registration

process Not realizing the expectation from teachers Lack of communication

From your prospective, describe the experience for entering students, including admissions and registration, assessment, and academic and financial advising. What are the strengths of the process? What are the areas in need of improvement?

Strengths: Knowledgeable staff/faculty The individual parts are great, the process as a whole needs

improvement Improvements Miscommunication with financial aid Placement Tests Not knowing the resources available Getting the run around Lack of straight line registration process Financial aid requirements (not fair a student has to take

developmental and core courses just to meet financial aid requirements)

When you think about students’ experiences before they begin college, are there any additional steps you believe the college could take to help students transition more successfully?

Mandatory ACA class first semester A better open house, maybe week long over summer Knowing the student demographic better Keeping the website up to date, this is our biggest form of

community communication Stress how important using BCCC email is for

communication Provide additional, easy to access info on curriculums Adult transition courses career services

How do the college’s campus resources serve the college’s mission?

”It’s a lot” (when referring to reading the mission statement) The college is very accessible, although enrollment is low The LEC allows the school to be more accessible The college is affordable We have good effective teachers but could do more to

develop teachers relevant training-we could improve computer literacy Are the college’s programs still relevant to the community? We could increase online degrees Mission statement has been the same for many years, It’s

time to revisit How does the college accomplish the vision?

We are our own best kept secret, improve advertising/marketing

community is not involved career services (not just for students but for community as

well) More public service events on campus to showcase faculty/staff talents the college is not innovative vision needs to be revisited safeguard the college’s reputation nurture the college’s open door policy


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Appendix G Advising Guide Outline The following sections are included in the Advising Guide: Advisor contact information BCCC Mission Advising Definition Student Responsibilities Advisor Responsibilities Link to curriculum flow charts for all programs Student Resources (with links, email addresses and telephone numbers) ADA Statement Student checklist, by term Academic Course Planner for use with the Academic Plan Assignment in college success

courses.


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Appendix H Academic PLAN Assignment Scoring Rubric

Student Learning Outcomes Unattempted (0)

Needs Improvement (1)

Satisfactory (2) Exemplary (3)

Students will establish career and educational goals based on Focus 2 Career assessments.

Students will identify a program of study/degree/ diploma/certificate.

Students will identify program of study/degree/ diploma/certificate requirements.

Students will identify correct amount of credit hours needed to earn desired degree/ diploma/certificate, taking into account credits already earned/transfered.

Students will outline a semester-by-semester academic course planner that includes all classes needed for completion.

Student will proactively seek a relationship with their advisor.

Students will identify obstacles to degree/ diploma/certificate completion.

Students will identify student support resources that may be helpful in achieving goals and get back on track as needed.

TOTAL SCORE:

PLAN ASSIGNMENT SCORING RUBRIC

Grading Scale: A=21-24 ptsB=17-20 ptsC=12-16 pts D=8-11 pts

F=7 or less pts


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Appendix I Advising Session Log


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Appendix J Academics Organizational Chart


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Appendix K North Carolina Community Colleges 2017 Performance Measures for Student Success


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95



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Appendix L NACADA Academic Advising Inventory


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Documents

BEAUFORTBEAUFORT COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE. 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY . Beaufort County Community College’s Quality Enhancement Plan, titled BCCC PLAN— Personalized Learning and Advising